The music was booming. The ballroom was packed. And Elon Musk was on stage, swinging a chainsaw in the air.
I was already seeing other surreal sights at a conservative political action meeting – a cat on his shoulder, a proud newly proud boy roaming around – but this is what It was clear that it was one of the indelible images of the annual Maga confab.
Musk can roe – or was he just making chainsaw noise? This was the chainsaw he was working on the bureaucracy, he said. “Chainsaw,” he repeated, seeking effect. He didn't turn it on.
This was a gift from Javier Mairi, the far-right Argentine president who gained power in 2023 and was sometimes praised by his masks for almost graphic purposes.
This episode showed that Musk is not just comfortable with right-wing leaders. It appears he's copying them too.
In 2022, economist and former media personality Milei released a “chain soap plan” that cuts public spending and significantly reduces the number of Argentine government ministries. Milei appeared at a campaign rally where a functional chainsaw and his supporters followed suits on replicas, representing his demonization of a group called “Political Castes.”
Once Miley took office, Musk, as he wrote last year, threw online tributes and talked about business with him behind closed doors. He did the same with the right-wing leaders of India and Brazil in his political beliefs and the handy marriage of his desire to make more money for his company.
And Musk spoke about Mailai's approach to government cuts, calling it “great” in a January post on X, highlighting his praise for Mailai for “removing the whole department.” He is now asking the US government to do the same.
The embrace of masks' global rights delighted CPAC participants. Everyone was on the same page about what really matters.
“I don't really approve of him like he's like a family that has so many children,” said Pam Rohl, 59, who has several different women. 12 children in masks were mentioned.
But Rohl, a retired employee who divides time between Chicago and Nashville, loves the X platform. And she loves what Musk does in the government.
“I think it's incredible to get to the bottom of government waste,” she said.
Latest mask news
Agent Status Report
FDA Crisis
In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration has been able to skim robotics and artificial intelligence experts and keep up with advances in medical technology. My colleague Christina Jewellett Layoffs at agents that may seem small – 700 layoffs of 18,000 staff – It wiped out many of those efforts.
Staff cuts are at a major cost to the Food and Drug Administration and are hampering the team overseeing the safety of medical devices that can be life-or fatal.
One such team reviews devices for people with diabetes. The new product is soaked under the skin to read glucose levels and automatically delivers insulin. Around half of the teams are gone after firing, despite team reviewing new devices and local complaints applications when patients are hospitalized or killed.
A similar level of cut hit a team regulating surgical robots operating in the heart and reproductive organs. Albert Yi was among those fired, but he received a call from the FDA about four hours after my article ran and returned him the job. He is scheduled to return Monday morning.
Some experts who are working on looking at the Neuralink brain implants on the mask have been fired. The device is the size of a small stack of half a dozen dollars and is installed by a surgical robot that cuts holes in the skull and implants it with small threads to read brain activity. The FDA is currently overseeing device investigations. It has been embedded in three people so far.
Read more about the cut.
– Christina Jewellett
Government agency details
To reply
Tell me: What's your question about Elon Musk?
We are jumping into mask work in Washington with this newsletter – and I want to know what you I want to know.
Please send us a question. Attract newsroom experts and get answers.
Submit your question here.
Meanwhile, with x
Creating human memes
My colleague Kate Conger We'll be looking at Musk's X's post and how he blends his online persona with his new role in Washington.
His social media site X, Musk celebrated the appearance of his CPAC and shared video clips from an interview there. The images and videos are useful for the mask myth project as they try to build their own image as an internet creature currently raiding federal bureaucracy.
These posts help Musk translate his work into two cultures. His chronically online fanbase and his new government policy circle. By memesing his work in Washington, he encourages it to be accessible to his followers and that they continue to cheer him on.
One of the first things Musk said at CPAC was, “I'm becoming a meme.” This is the meme itself. This phrase is J. Point to a quote from Robert Oppenheimer – “Now I will be the destroyer of the world” – and it is recycled infinitely and remixed online.
However, Musk also appears to have mentioned his image of himself generated by artificial intelligence last year. It shows him sitting behind a gold-plated sign with the words “Doge” written on it, wrapped in a leather jacket and black glasses with a square frame. The mask was dressed in very similar clothes in CPAC, and even had thick gold chains around his neck.
At CPAC, Musk talked about making memes a reality. “I'm living my dreams, memes are alive, but what's going on about it?” he said. “I mean, Doge started out as a meme. Think about it.”
His so-called Government Efficiency Bureau borrows its name from Dogecoin Cryptocurrency. Some of Musk's X-followers proposed him the name Doge last year, and Musk ran with it, turning online jokes into Washington's transformational power.
All this gives Musk followers an intoxicating feeling of being engrossed in a joke, and a sense that they are adjacent to power. For everyone they know, one of their responses to X's mask could be the next idea for his Washington acquisition.
– Kate Conger
By numbers
Head Count
My colleagues are tracking the numbers behind Trump and Musk's attempts to reduce government pay. The cuts and temporary removals confirmed as of yesterday are as follows:
Are masks still interested in selling cars?
Tesla sales have been hampered, and Musk, the CEO of Musk, has not provided a specific plan for the revival.
His attention has spread thinly among multiple companies, and his job as advising Trump, investors and analysts have now become interested in Musk's car development, production and sales shattering business. He says he's lost it, Jack Ewing writes.
“The more loyalty you divide,” a corporate governance expert told Jack.
