Last night, X’s “For You” algorithm offered me up what felt like a dispatch from an alternate universe. It was a post from Elon Musk, originally published hours earlier. “This is the first time humans have been in orbit around the poles of the Earth!” he wrote. Underneath his post was a video shared by SpaceX—footage of craggy ice caps, taken by the company’s Dragon spacecraft during a private mission. Taken on its own, the video is genuinely captivating. Coming from Musk at that moment, it was also somewhat depressing.

X fed me that video just moments after it became clear that Susan Crawford, the Democratic judge Musk spent $25 million campaigning against, would handily win election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Given Musk’s heavy involvement—the centibillionaire not only campaigned in the state but also brazenly attempted to buy the election by offering to pay voters $100 for signing a petition from his America PAC opposing “activist judges”—the election was billed as a referendum of sorts on Musk’s own popularity. In that sense, it was a resounding defeat. Musk, normally a frenetic poster, had very little to say about politics last night, pecking out just a handful of terse messages to his 218.5 million followers. “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary,” he posted at 1:23 a.m. eastern time.

In the light of defeat, the SpaceX post feels like a glimpse into what could have been for Musk—a timeline where the world’s richest man wasn’t algorithmically radicalized by his own social-media platform. It’s possible that Musk’s temperament and personal politics would have always led him down this path. But it’s also easy to imagine a version where he mostly stayed out of politics, instead leaning into his companies and continuing to bolster his carefully cultivated brand of Elon Musk, King of Nerd Geniuses.

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Unfortunately, he surrendered fully to grievance politics. Like so many other prolific posters, he became the person his most vocal followers wanted him to be and, in the process, appears to have committed reputational suicide. Since joining President Donald Trump’s administration as DOGE’s figurehead—presiding over the quasi-legal gutting of the federal government—Musk has become not just polarizing but also genuinely unpopular in America. Now his political influence is waning, Tesla is the object of mass protest, and sales of his vehicles are cratering. This morning, only hours after his candidate lost, Trump reportedly told his inner circle and Cabinet members that Musk will be “stepping back” from his perch in the administration for a more “supporting role.” In Trumpworld, nothing’s over until it’s over, but Elon Musk seems to have overstayed his welcome. (Musk did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the White House referred me to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s post calling the report that Musk is stepping back “garbage”; Musk posted on X that the reporting is “fake news.”)

Musk’s appeal to Trump has always been about two things: money and optics. As the richest man in the world, Musk is both a cash cow and a kind of enforcer: His checkbook and closeness to Trump remind Republicans in Congress that they can and will be primaried if they break from the administration. But Musk’s reputation is just as important to Trump, who respects great wealth and clearly enjoys being shadowed and adored by a man of Musk’s perceived stature and technological acumen (although Trump is easily impressed—take, for example, “Everything’s Computer!”) Musk’s image in Silicon Valley was useful to the Trump campaign, bringing in new fanboy voters and sending a message that the administration would transform the government and run it like a lean start-up.

But although his money is still good, the Wisconsin election suggests that Musk himself is an electoral liability. A poll released today, conducted in Wisconsin by Marquette University Law School, showed that 60 percent of respondents view Musk unfavorably, and a recent Harvard/Harris poll shows that his national favorability dropped 10 points from February to March. (He now has a net favorability rating of –10 percent.) An aggregation of national polls shows that the approval rating of his DOGE efforts has also dipped dramatically: Just 39 percent of Americans approve of his work, nearly 10 points lower than in mid-February.

To many observers, it seemed inevitable from the outset that, over time, Musk would clash with, and alienate himself from, Trump, a man who does not like to share the spotlight. But behind Musk’s low favorability rating is a simple notion: Americans (including Trump supporters) are uncomfortable and resentful of an unelected mega-billionaire rooting through the government, dismantling programs and blithely musing about cutting benefit programs such as Social Security. Musk has long behaved in business as though laws and regulations don’t apply to him—a tactic that seems to backfire more easily when applied to politics. His posts, which use captions such as “Easy money in Wisconsin” to offer thinly veiled bribes to state residents for posing outside polling locations, aren’t just questionably legal; they’re blatant reminders that the world’s richest man was attempting to purchase an election.

There is also, perhaps, a creeping sensation that Musk’s efficiency hunt into the government has not yielded the examples of corruption that Trump supporters crave. During a Q&A at Musk’s rally in Wisconsin on Sunday, one attendee asked if DOGE had found any evidence that “radical left” Democrats have received money from USAID, and if so, whether Musk planned to share the evidence. Musk stammered, explaining only that USAID’s money flowed circuitously and that it was suspicious that members of Congress were so wealthy. Throughout the rally, Musk seemed more interested in role-playing as a politician, delivering “extended monologues about immigration policy, alleged fraud in the Social Security system and the future of artificial intelligence,” as The New York Times reported.

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Trump may be realizing that though tech products and services may be quite popular, their creators are often less appealing. (Two-thirds of Americans have an unfavorable view of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, even as billions of people around the world use his platforms.) To those outside of the techno-optimist bubble, plenty of the obsessions of the tech elite (artificial general intelligence, cryptocurrency) can come off as weird or inscrutable. “As I mentioned several years ago, it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence,” Musk posted on X in the wee hours today, as if to prove the point.

Musk seems, at least outwardly, unable to reckon with his current position. Just days after framing this race as a hinge point for “the entire destiny of humanity,” Musk said on X that “I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for positional gain.” From the outside, though, it’s difficult to see what he’s gained. Last week, protesters demonstrated outside hundreds of Tesla locations; Musk has long been erratic, but his dalliance with DOGE has alienated environmentally conscious liberals, a major demographic for electric vehicles. And by seeming so focused on DOGE, he’s frustrated investors who worry that Tesla is losing its first-mover advantage in the United States. Foreign rivals, such as China’s BYD, are quickly gaining steam. Tesla’s stock price instantly rose 15 points on the reports that Musk would soon leave the administration.

There is a case to be made that Musk’s cozying up to Trump will ultimately benefit Musk’s empire—avoiding regulations that may help with Tesla’s self-driving plans or SpaceX and Starlink contracts, for example. But so many of the signs point to a less desirable outcome. Musk’s outsize support of Trump was always a political risk, but his decision to come aboard the administration and, at one time, position himself as a kind of shadow president is arguably the biggest bet of his career. In the short term, it does not appear to be paying off.

Musk woke up this morning less popular than he’s been in recent memory. He’s alienated himself from an American public that used to widely revere him, and his political capital seems to be fading rapidly. The only question now is whether, after getting a taste of the political spotlight, he’ll be able to give it up without a fight.