Welcome back to One-Minute Insight. Today, we’re unpacking the New York Times opinion piece on “The Biggest Mystery of Elon Musk.” Six months ago, we expected Musk in a second Trump administration to lead on space, deregulation and culture wars. Instead, he cast himself as a deficit hawk, proposing trillions in budget cuts. As the Times notes, he styled himself “a one-man version of the Simpson-Bowles commission,” driven by apocalyptic warnings about our fiscal crisis. But deficit mania is hardly his trademark—on the New Right, cutting entitlements is seen as old-guard Paul Ryan territory. Even his famous smackdown to Trump—“Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years”—frames him as a killjoy scold, not a futurist. The Times argues that slashing the federal budget may be one ambitious project Musk should leave to someone else.
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