Elon Musk tends to get what he wants. That’s what money and power do for you, after all. But there are notable exceptions. Case in point: He wanted people to vote for Republicans in the midterms. He spent almost half a billion dollars trying to bolster Republican campaigns so that people would do what he wanted.
And the scale at which the American people did the exact opposite of what Musk wanted is unprecedented in living memory. It’s helpful to read what Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been writing. DeSantis has been pouring salt in the wounds of his fellow Republicans over on X with his gloomy posts about the colossal scale of their loss:
“Chance of confirming a worthy successor to Justice Thomas and/or Alito during President Trump’s term: Zero.
Chance of confirming a worthy successor during a hypothetical GOP admin 2029-2033: probably zero (GOP won’t be able to recapture enough seats in 28).”
In other words, this unprecedented, thermonuclear defeat for the Republicans will reverberate for years, will rewrite the laws of political physics, and—it should go without saying—will define Trump’s lame duck period. So yeah, it didn’t go well for Musk.
Many noticed as the returns came in that Musk wasn’t posting, and they expressed what I assume is mock concern for his wellbeing. His pinned post at the time was a diatribe about what he thought would happen if the Democrats won (the end of Democracy), and his most recent political post was one from early on Election Day simply saying “Vote red today!” But for hours his silence was deafening.
Then he posted some (I guess) jokes:
Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2026
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now” is presumably a crack about the government likely soon becoming less friendly to data center construction. About a minute after that, he posted this:
Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time 🤷♂️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2026
Musk says he guesses his “election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time.” Say what you will, that’s clearly intended to be a joke. So everyone can stop acting like he’s upset about this. Would he be posting jokes if he were mad?
It’s worth noting that he went back and deleted that X post that said “Vote red today!” as well. And then by about 3:15 a.m. ET, he was seemingly posting business-as-usual stuff about his company’s products.
Here’s something he might want to think about though: government corruption, rarely a major concern among U.S. voters in recent history, has recently shot to the number one spot according to one survey asking voters what motivates them. James Talarico, the Democrat who won the Texas Senate seat that was one of the focal points of Musk’s financial efforts accused Musk of trying to buy his own “personal U.S. Senator.”
There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal U.S. Senator. https://t.co/YBluQnfFQf
— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) October 22, 2026
When you’re the richest person in the world and you live in a red state, and you become the biggest political donor in the country, largely in an attempt to persuade voters in that state to stay red, and they respond by making their state blue, it must be hard not to wonder if you made things worse for yourself.
