As political observers watch Elon Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop maneuvering on behalf of the Trump administration with mounting alarm — and some sound warnings about his shadow presidency — an unnerving question begins to arise: Does the world’s richest man, now armed with levers of governmental power, have a point of professional vulnerability? Is there a soft underbelly or glass jaw for critics to exploit in his empire, other than the mogul’s own potential excesses?
While much has been written about the speed at which President Donald Trump has sought to remake the federal government, filling its ranks with loyalists and leaving institutions broken and reeling in his wake, Musk’s involvement as an unelected private citizen has to many been particularly disturbing, including his seemingly unbridled access to Treasury Department information.