The War on Elon Musk: Bought and Paid for by Democrats

In politics, as in physics, action begets reaction. Elon Musk’s fifteen-point favorability decline did not happen in a vacuum. According to Nate Silver, Musk’s popularity dropped 14 percent compared to Donald Trump’s 5 percent in the same period. That fact might seem to suggest Musk has become politically radioactive by his own hand. But it is Musk himself who best explains this phenomenon: “The inevitable outcome of having a political propaganda war waged against me while I have almost no countervailing campaign and, at times, digging my own grave way better than my enemies do.” He is half right. He does dig. But the grave was dug long before he arrived with a shovel.

To understand Musk’s collapse in public favor, one must understand the architecture of attack that surrounds him. This architecture is neither spontaneous nor benign. It is not simply a matter of critics online or the backlash of market sentiment. It is the result of a coordinated, well-funded, digitally networked, multi-platform propaganda and protest apparatus that has made Elon Musk the central symbol of the Left’s war on free enterprise, masculinity, decentralization, and dissent.

Musk is not merely a billionaire. He is a billionaire who dared to criticize the cathedral. He mocked sacred cows, opened the gates of Twitter to previously banned accounts, and embraced Donald Trump. He embodies, in one man, too many heresies for the Left to tolerate. That is why he is the subject of a relentless campaign, not simply of criticism, but of coordinated delegitimization.

Begin with Indivisible, the flagship activist enterprise born from the 2016 anti-Trump resistance. Indivisible is not a grassroots movement but a political corporation, funded by the Tides Foundation and boosted by megadonors like Reid Hoffman. They engineered the “Musk or Us” campaign, a protest initiative complete with digital toolkits, printable signs, and reimbursement programs for would-be protestors. One document encourages local activists to target Tesla dealerships and congressional offices during recess, casting Musk as a co-conspirator in an alleged Trumpist coup.

Alongside Indivisible, MoveOn brought its formidable reach to bear, co-organizing the April 5, 2025 “Hands Off” protests that swept across the country. These events, far from spontaneous, were organized using platforms like Mobilize America and Action Network, both tied to progressive infrastructure dating back to the Occupy movement. Over 1,200 coordinated events were logged, complete with shared talking points, sign templates, and legal guidance. This is not grassroots, it is astroturf with Silicon Valley-grade logistics.

And what exactly were they protesting? Nominally, Trump’s second administration. Functionally, Musk’s appointment as czar of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency, the blunt instrument tasked with executing deep cuts to bloated federal agencies. In other words, Musk was punished for attempting to bring Silicon Valley’s ethos of innovation and efficiency into the federal bureaucracy. For this, he became the scapegoat of the bureaucratic class and their nonprofit allies.

Consider the involvement of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose weekly demonstrations against Tesla facilities were anything but symbolic. Their literature describes Musk as a fascist oligarch, their signs read “Socialism Beats Fascism,” and their organizing partners include Antifa-aligned anarchist collectives. These are not criticisms. They are attempts at character assassination, equating market innovation with political tyranny, treating entrepreneurship as violence.

The irony, if one permits a brief moral aside, is thick. The same people who insist climate change is an existential threat target the world’s most successful electric vehicle pioneer for destruction, not because of his carbon emissions, but because of his politics. Musk is not being punished for failing their standards, but for violating their aesthetic. He is a rebel billionaire, not a courtier.

It is important to distinguish between protest and propaganda. Protest, even disruptive protest, is a protected and vital form of political expression. Propaganda, by contrast, is a campaign of distortions designed to control the public narrative and preclude dissent. The attacks on Musk belong to the latter. The same slogans appear on the same signs across thousands of miles. The toolkits offer chants. The de-escalation guides offer instructions on how to respond to press inquiries. This is not the messy pluralism of democratic action, it is the theater of manufactured rage.

The funding behind this campaign deepens the concern. Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Tides Foundation, and the Sandler family all appear in the donor rolls of the principal groups targeting Musk. These same networks supported previous efforts to delegitimize Trump through media partnerships, election influence operations, and nonprofit lawsuits. That they have turned their attention to Musk suggests something deeper than politics. It suggests a cultural vendetta.

The key point, however, is not simply that Musk is being attacked. That is old news. The key point is that the attack has worked. His favorability has cratered, despite Tesla’s dominance, SpaceX’s success, and X’s evolution as a viable free speech platform. How? Because narrative trumps fact, and repetition breeds reality. A man made villainous by a thousand slogans becomes a villain whether he deserves it or not. The Left understands this. It is the central insight of modern propaganda.

The playbook is borrowed, almost plagiarized, from earlier assaults on Trump himself. In 2017, the resistance weaponized the nonprofit sector. Now they are using it to kneecap Musk. Just as Russia hysteria delegitimized Trump, budget hysteria now surrounds Musk. Just as Trump was portrayed as an authoritarian for enforcing border law, Musk is now accused of tyranny for closing down redundant bureaucracies. The machinery is the same, only the target has changed.

What makes Musk especially vulnerable is his refusal to play defense. Trump thrives in battle. Musk, by contrast, prefers engineering to campaigning. His unguarded moments on X are refreshingly candid, but they offer fodder to his enemies. When he jokes, they quote. When he stumbles, they script a narrative of failure. This asymmetry of warfare—where one side has billions in narrative infrastructure and the other has one man and a cell phone—is how a hero becomes a villain in the public eye.

The net result is a public mind bent by professional messaging masquerading as grassroots outrage. The decline in Musk’s popularity is not a referendum on his character, it is a consequence of strategic delegitimization. The media reports his missteps. The nonprofits amplify them. The donors finance them. The platforms coordinate them. The protestors broadcast them. What begins as a bad headline becomes a loss in public favor.

And yet, this machine only works when it goes unchallenged. Sunlight still disinfects. When Americans learn that protest toolkits offer $200 reimbursements, they reconsider the authenticity of the march. When they see signs printed in bulk and distributed by email, they recognize choreography. When they hear that violence at Tesla dealerships coincided with Indivisible’s toolkit rollout, they suspect coordination.

If Musk is guilty of anything, it is believing that good deeds and good ideas are sufficient defense against bad actors. But the American public is not as cynical as his enemies suppose. Given the facts, most citizens can tell the difference between a grassroots uprising and a billionaire-funded psyop. What is required now is not that Musk fight harder, but that more Americans see clearly. The war on Musk is not about Musk. It is about whether dissent from the technocratic consensus is still permissible. It is about whether a man who builds instead of destroys, who innovates instead of agitates, who jokes instead of grovels, can still stand tall in public life.

Musk’s drop in favorability is not organic. It is manufactured. It is the product of a system that targets deviation from orthodoxy with ruthless precision. And it proves one thing above all: when propaganda works, even a rocket scientist can be brought down to Earth.

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