Elon Musk Offers Tragic Response to New Reports of His Unpopularity

Pollster Nate Silver on Friday launched a new “popularity tracker” focused on Elon Musk, and it’s already confirmed what many have long suspected: Almost nobody likes the guy.

Silver’s newest tracker accompanies the tool he has long used to follow President Donald Trump‘s standing. While the numbers aren’t particularly positive for either man, they’re overwhelmingly bleak for Musk, something he himself was quick to acknowledge.

Replying to Silver’s tweet announcing the tracker, Musk wrote, “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 🤣🤣.”

Silver’s statistics currently show that just 39.6 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Musk, compared to 53.5 percent with an unfavorable view. That makes Musk’s net favorability -13.8 percent. (Trump’s net approval rating, meanwhile, is also in the red at -5.1 percent.)

The tracker pulls data back to January 2024, when Musk’s numbers were essentially reversed and he had a net favorability rating of 5.9 percent. Musk’s popularity started declining following his endorsement of Trump last July. It has cratered since Trump took office in January and Musk established DOGE, taking a wrecking ball—or should that be a chainsaw?—to American governmental institutions in the name of efficiency.

The tracker’s launch comes just days after a Rolling Stone report revealed that senior Trump administration figures are struggling with Musk’s “annoying” behavior. “Elon just thinks he’s smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” one said.

“Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard,” another official told the magazine. “He’s just the most irritating person I’ve ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.”