President-elect Donald Trump has been living in leftist heads since 2016, but he’s now sharing his rent-free digs with billionaire entrepreneur and free-speech advocate Elon Musk. Progressives have been furious with Musk since he acquired a controlling interest in Twitter, now X. More recently, of course, things escalated when the Tesla CEO endorsed then-presidential candidate Trump and was subsequently tapped to head up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump’s 2024 election victory. This has all sent the political left over the edge, and the attacks on all things Elon have now become both hilarious and quite disturbing.
It is widely known that, for years, conservative users and right-leaning news outlets were heavily censored on Twitter. Since Musk’s takeover and the platform’s rebirth as X, politically motivated censorship has all but disappeared. Conservative voices on the platform are emboldened and more visible, which has caused a lot of progressives to scream that X is now a haven of right-wing extremism.
Elon Musk Brings Balance to X
Survey data from Pew Research dispels that hysteria, though. Pew polled Twitter/X users on their party identification. In 2022, 65% of the people who said they regularly use the platform to get their news identified as Democrat, while only 31% claimed to be Republican. In 2024, the split is 48% Democrat and 47% Republican. As Harry Enten, host of CNN's Margins of Error, said of Elon Musk, “He's remade X/Twitter in his image... Turning it from a Democratic bastion to one that is far more evenly divided (& friendlier to the GOP).”
This hasn't stopped left-wing “journalists” from losing their minds over a social media landscape that exists only in their heads – or perhaps only in the propaganda they disseminate in their attempts to destroy everything that Elon Musk has touched. Atlantic writer Charlie Warzel provides just one of the countless examples when he writes, "X is no longer a social-media site with a white-supremacy problem, but a white-supremacist site with a social-media problem."
Some X users pithily – and accurately – pointed to the real issue leftists have with the new-look platform. As reported by Twitchy, Jeff A (@Mithrandir48) wrote that it’s “really just in the head of liberals who are so used to dominating the narrative that equality feels like oppression.” Sam Barber (@SamBarber1910) observed, “A reminder that folks who are leaving Twitter are doing so not because they were not permitted to express their opinion, but because you *are* permitted to express yours.”
California Grudge Match
However, it's not just the anti-free speech crowd going after Elon Musk because he restored free speech to the social media platform. The world's richest man being a “right wing activist” – as some on the left have called him – is a threat to the entire progressive agenda, and Musk is being targeted outside the world of social media.
As Donald Trump mulls eliminating federal tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles (EVs), California Governor Gavin Newsom has unveiled a plan that would provide rebates to people who purchase EVs in his state – unless the EV in question was built by Musk's Tesla. The irony of this possibly unconstitutional idea, as Musk himself pointed out, is that Tesla is the only company manufacturing EVs in California. So, this is hardly a sound decision from a business perspective, and it appears to be a case of Newsom directly targeting Elon Musk for political reasons.
Judging by Newsom's questionable legislative proposal and by former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich calling for Musk's arrest, among other accusations and calls for investigations targeting the billionaire, it appears the left has found a new bogeyman. So far, Elon Musk seems to be enjoying the show. But now that he will be working in tandem with a new Trump administration, the attacks on him are only just ramping up. It's going to be interesting to watch over the next four years. Will Musk simply weather the storm, or will he go on the offensive and bring the storm to his critics?
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