Kara Swisher: For Trump, Elon Musk is a heat shield

Cedarburg, Wisconsin (CNN) — Ask voters in this politically divided Wisconsin suburb about President Donald Trump’s first month in office, and another name quickly follows: Elon Musk.

Opinions about the tech billionaire’s role in the Trump administration’s efforts to slash government spending are shaping how those in Cedarburg – a city that split nearly evenly in the 2020 and 2024 elections, in one of the nation’s most competitive swing states – say they view the first month of the president’s return to power.

Gina Cilento said she voted for Trump after a stretch of being undecided leading up to November’s election and is “really glad I did.”

She credited Trump for “cleaning house with commonsense moves to get rid of the horrific spending that’s going on that taxpayers didn’t know about.”

“I’m really amazed at what he’s accomplishing within his first month in office,” said Cilento, who runs a pickleball studio in Cedarburg.

However, she added that she is “not 100% on board with Elon Musk” – the man who Trump says is in charge of the new Department of Government Efficiency and implementing those spending reductions through layoffs, budget cuts and the smothering of agencies. Those moves have spurred dozens of lawsuits.

She pointed to the world’s richest man’s business interests, including his startup Neuralink, which Musk said last month had implanted a chip in a human brain for the first time; his Starlink satellite internet service, and his involvement in artificial intelligence development.

“There’s always agendas. I just hope he does what he’s supposed to do” in Trump’s White House, she said.

Cilento’s reservations about Musk largely mirror a CNN poll conducted by SSRS released Friday. The national survey found Trump’s approval rating at 47% with 52% disapproving. Asked about Musk’s prominent role, 28% of those polled said it was a good thing, while 54% said it was a bad thing.

Fifty-two percent said Trump has gone too far in using the power of the presidency compared to 39% who said his performance has been about right, and 51% said he had gone too far in cutting federal government programs.

Cedarburg, a small city of 12,000 about 20 minutes north of Milwaukee with a bustling downtown reminiscent of a Hallmark movie, is a window into a divided nation. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won Cedarburg by 194 votes out of more than 8,800 cast in 2024. Former President Joe Biden won the town by just 19 votes in 2020.

Along city streets, it’s not uncommon to see neighbors with yard signs backing opposing candidates – with the April 1 state Supreme Court election between conservative candidate Brad Schimel and liberal Susan Crawford now the subjects of signs that four months ago were focused on the presidential election.

The city sits in Ozaukee County – one of the suburban “WOW” counties, along with Waukesha and Washington, that have inched left in recent elections but have traditionally backed Republican candidates by huge margins. That suburban drift in Democrats’ favor mirrors national trends since Trump took the political stage nearly a decade ago. But Trump offset that slippage in 2024 by making gains among non-White voters, particularly Latinos.

Shari Van Beek, a retiree and long-time Cedarburg resident who voted for Harris, said Trump’s presidency is “worse than what I thought it would be” after one month.

“He’s tearing the whole government apart. I feel like he’s trying to put in his own Constitution, which would change our whole system,” she said.

She then turned to Musk’s role.

“Why is Elon Musk even a part of this?” Van Beek said. “Why is he in the White House? He’s not an elected official. Why is he making decisions? Why is he on Fox News, sitting next to the president, answering questions?”

She was referring to a joint Trump and Musk interview with conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired this week.

“Who is really in charge?” she said.

Van Beek said she expected one upside of Trump’s win might be the economy.

“He has done nothing for our economy, and things are just getting worse. The price of everything is going up. And he said he would do that – he would fix it,” she said.

CNN’s poll found that 62% of US adults feel Trump has not gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods – including 47% of Republicans, 65% of independents and 73% of Democrats.

Cilento, the Trump voter, said she wants the president to tackle inflation, but believes he is “covering so much ground in a short amount of time” and thinks it’s too early to judge him on the state of the economy.

John Harbeck, a retiree who backed Harris, said he worries that Trump’s administration is cutting funding for programs that help Americans. He rolled his eyes over Musk’s involvement.

“It’s hard to understand,” he said.

Ashley, a retail worker in Cedarburg who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons, said she gathered petition signatures for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be placed on Wisconsin’s ballot during his independent presidential bid, and wrote in Kennedy in November despite his dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump.

She said she considers herself “more MAHA than MAGA” – meaning, “Make America Healthy Again” as opposed to Trump’s slogan. But she voted for Trump in 2020, and said she was optimistic to learn Kennedy would join Trump’s Cabinet as secretary of Health and Human Services.

She said she has “mixed feelings” over Trump’s presidency so far because she is “not a fan of Elon Musk.”

“I like how on paper, they’re trying to look for waste and things that could be allocated the wrong way. But I feel like there needs to be even more transparency,” she said.

Like Cilento, she pointed to Musk’s involvement in Neuralink, saying she has religious concerns about the company’s work. She also pointed to interviews in which Musk has discussed making Mars livable for humans, and said she has concerns about artificial intelligence.

She said Musk’s work in Trump’s administration leaves her unsure “which way’s up and which way’s down.”

“It’s just a lot of confusion,” she said. “You can’t even keep up with everything.”

The-CNN-Wire
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