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Elon Musk posted a poll question to his X followers on Tuesday afternoon. "Would you like DOGE to audit the IRS?" Within 24 hours, nearly 2 million X users had voted: 51 percent chose "yes," and 41 percent selected "F yes" with a raised-hands emoji. Just 8 percent said "no."
In Washington, Musk's incursion into the federal government has triggered alarm, protests and lawsuits. Polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the billionaire's role in President Donald Trump's administration.
But on X, the social media platform Musk owns and inhabits, the conservative political and tech influencers who form his digital circle are hailing his march through federal institutions as a heroic disruption of bureaucracy - and Musk is soaking up their adulation while taking suggestions on his next targets.
With Musk's U.S. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Service remaking agencies on the fly, X is emerging as Musk's own digital Mar-a-Lago: an online club populated by admirers who pay a premium for a blue checkmark and the chance to seek his favor, whether in the form of a viral repost or a slot for their pet cause in his sweeping political agenda. And as in a private club, those who offend the owner risk getting tossed out.
Over the past week, as DOGE employees have infiltrated and taken charge of one federal agency after the next, Musk has emceed the proceedings for his 216 million X followers almost around-the-clock. Along the way, he has reposted falsehoods about the agencies he's slashing, accused federal agencies and individuals of criminality, and made cryptic announcements about shutting down government payments and units. He has hosted celebratory audio live streams with political allies and mocked his critics with memes of himself as a "Godfather"-style mob boss.
As his poll on the IRS closed Wednesday, Musk reposted the results with a Latin phrase - "Vox populi, vox dei" ("The voice of the people is the voice of God") - indicating that his decision had been made.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 with promises to make it a "free speech" zone where left and right could mix it up without fear of being muzzled. Since then, the platform has been transformed into a reflection of its outsize owner. X still hosts plenty of criticism of Musk and the Trump administration, including from leading Democrats such as Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York). But tangling with Musk there can lead to a mockery pile-on when he shares a disparaging post with his massive following. And the platform's tolerance for free speech sometimes ends abruptly when an account crosses one of Musk's personal lines.
On Monday, after an anonymous account posted on X the names of the young DOGE engineers - first identified by Wired - who demanded access to the U.S. Treasury's computer systems, Musk replied, "You have committed a crime." Hours later, the account was gone, replaced by a message saying it had been suspended for violating X's rules.
On Monday, Musk shared a chain of posts from conservative media figures criticizing the General Services Administration's tech arm, a unit known as 18F that was credited with developing the IRS's self-serve "Direct File" software, as "far left." One of the posts falsely claimed that Direct File "puts the government in charge of preparing people's tax returns for them," a post that now appears on X with a rebutting fact-check from the site's own "Community Notes" program.
That didn't stop Musk from quoting the posts and adding his own cryptic, headline-making message: "That group has been deleted." In fact, members of the unit say it still exists - but its X account no longer does. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
It is on X, not in some office or restaurant, that Republican politicians, tech industry executives and conservative influencers gather to post messages praising Musk's work, backing his stances and posting fodder for his arguments. The implicit hope is that Musk will reply or repost them approvingly to the platform's largest audience - and now that he's setting priorities for the Trump administration, perhaps even act on them.
On Sunday, Ryan Petersen, CEO of the San Francisco-based logistics firm Flexport, reached Musk directly with an X post that began, "Dear @DOGE please look into the U.S. Mint in San Francisco," suggesting it should be shut down and repurposed. An hour later, at 4:18 a.m. Eastern time, Musk replied, "Noted," prompting Petersen to repost the interaction with the caption: "Can't believe this app is only $8."
A Washington Post analysis shows Musk has dramatically ramped up his already prolific posting on X since October, sending more than 3,000 posts and replies each month - or more than 100 a day. That's about four times the volume of posts he sent in the first quarter of last year.
Eddie Perez, a former director for civic integrity at Twitter who is now a board member of the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Musk worked during the campaign to turn X into "a right-wing propaganda machine for Trump." Now that the billionaire is a key figure in the Trump administration, Perez said, "he's using X like a wire service to announce consequential and unlawful decisions about the federal government, as if he is CEO for all Americans."
The way Musk has used X to rally support for the Trump administration's rapid disassembly of the U.S. Agency for International Development exemplifies the platform's power as a sort of party whip.
While Trump and his then-nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made it clear in January that they would target USAID for cuts - as the conservative Heritage Foundation had proposed in its Project 2025 blueprint - the situation seemed to escalate over the weekend.
On Sunday, an account called Autism Capital posted that two senior officials at USAID were put on leave for trying to prevent DOGE employees from accessing the agency's computer systems. Musk shared Autism Capital's post on X and added an ominous message: "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."
While Democrats reacted with shock - Could Musk really kill USAID? What did he mean by "criminal organization"? - conservative and far-right X accounts joined Musk in jubilation.
"By closing USAID, Trump and Musk have toppled the most gigantic global terror organization in history," posted Milo Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting a racist harassment campaign before Musk reinstated him in 2022. Musk shared Yiannopoulos's post, adding a bull's eye emoji.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, Musk reiterated his intentions on an audio live stream on X with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and others, who endorsed them. Ernst has positioned herself as a top Musk ally in Congress, where she heads up a new Senate DOGE Caucus.
Another Capitol Hill partner is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), whose X account Musk also reinstated from a permanent ban. She heads a DOGE subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee and was tagged and praised by Musk in an X post Monday, responding to a report that her subcommittee will call the chief executives of NPR and PBS to testify on allegations of liberal bias on their publicly funded networks. A day later, Greene announced on X that she's introducing a bill "abolishing" USAID.
It isn't just Republican lawmakers lining up to back Musk on X.
On Monday, interim U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. sought to lend legal heft to Musk's anger at those who published the identities of DOGE employees. He posted on X, "Dear @elon, Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled."
The letter, marked "SENT VIA X: @elonmusk," pledged to "pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people."
While threatening government employees is illegal, publishing their names is generally protected by the First Amendment. Musk himself has done it as recently as November, when he targeted government employees whose jobs he deemed wasteful or fraudulent, leading at least one to delete her social media accounts.
The lionization of Musk and his work remaking the government has given the once freewheeling platform a boosterish tone. "I'm worried about X becoming effectively state media," said Dartmouth College political science professor Brendan Nyhan.
But while Democrats and some legal scholars have decried Musk's reliance on a handful of young coders with no government experience to seize federal infrastructure, including payment systems inside the U.S. Treasury, tech insiders on X saw it another way.
Influential industry figures argued on their X accounts that they felt safer in the hands of "cracked" engineers such as Luke Farritor, a former SpaceX intern who won a prize last year for decoding an ancient scroll. Two posts mocking an image that said, "Who are these little boys? And why are they in charge of our money?" were viewed more than 3 million times combined.
X has become a Musk echo chamber in part by design.
On Twitter, the replies to popular tweets like Musk's were often a battleground for clashing worldviews, with opposing responses vying for likes. But one of the most influential changes Musk made to the platform was to prioritize replies from users who pay a monthly fee for X Premium, which also gives them the iconic blue verification badge once reserved for celebrities and media figures.
As liberals and others disillusioned with Musk's X have either left the platform or declined to pay for subscriptions, the top replies to the most popular posts are now often dominated by conservatives and Musk acolytes. That can lend a sense of broad agreement to posts that espouse conservative stances, including Musk's.
A top reply to Musk's poll asking whether he should "audit the IRS" came from a verified X user named Arthur MacWaters. His bio identifies him as the 27-year-old CEO and co-founder of Legion Health, a start-up offering "AI-enabled psychiatry," and an alumnus of the Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator. His response: "Shoot I pressed 'yes' too quick and [didn't] realize 'F yes' was an option."
Ernst, the senator from Iowa, reposted Musk's poll Tuesday with her own answer: "Yes, and I have a bill to do just that! My Audit the IRS Act will audit the auditors and fire the more than 800 IRS agents who owe millions of dollars in back taxes."
Within 45 minutes, Musk had reposted Ernst's repost of his post, adding "Awesome" with a sunglasses emoji. That helped her post reach some 13 million views - nearly 2,000 times more than the nearly 7,000 views she had garnered when she posted about the act in January, without Musk's amplification.
While Twitter has never boasted as many users as Facebook or YouTube, it has long been influential in politics as an "agenda-setting tool to talk about preferred issues and reinforce specific points of view," said Annelise Russell, a professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky.
"The biggest asset of Twitter, and now X, has always been its ability to reorient agendas, change what people are talking about," Russell said.
While Trump now posts primarily on his own social network, Truth Social, Musk's account commands singular influence on X. As its owner, he controls its workings - and everyone knows where to find him.
In Washington, Musk's incursion into the federal government has triggered alarm, protests and lawsuits. Polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the billionaire's role in President Donald Trump's administration.
But on X, the social media platform Musk owns and inhabits, the conservative political and tech influencers who form his digital circle are hailing his march through federal institutions as a heroic disruption of bureaucracy - and Musk is soaking up their adulation while taking suggestions on his next targets.
With Musk's U.S. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Service remaking agencies on the fly, X is emerging as Musk's own digital Mar-a-Lago: an online club populated by admirers who pay a premium for a blue checkmark and the chance to seek his favor, whether in the form of a viral repost or a slot for their pet cause in his sweeping political agenda. And as in a private club, those who offend the owner risk getting tossed out.
Over the past week, as DOGE employees have infiltrated and taken charge of one federal agency after the next, Musk has emceed the proceedings for his 216 million X followers almost around-the-clock. Along the way, he has reposted falsehoods about the agencies he's slashing, accused federal agencies and individuals of criminality, and made cryptic announcements about shutting down government payments and units. He has hosted celebratory audio live streams with political allies and mocked his critics with memes of himself as a "Godfather"-style mob boss.
As his poll on the IRS closed Wednesday, Musk reposted the results with a Latin phrase - "Vox populi, vox dei" ("The voice of the people is the voice of God") - indicating that his decision had been made.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 with promises to make it a "free speech" zone where left and right could mix it up without fear of being muzzled. Since then, the platform has been transformed into a reflection of its outsize owner. X still hosts plenty of criticism of Musk and the Trump administration, including from leading Democrats such as Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York). But tangling with Musk there can lead to a mockery pile-on when he shares a disparaging post with his massive following. And the platform's tolerance for free speech sometimes ends abruptly when an account crosses one of Musk's personal lines.
On Monday, after an anonymous account posted on X the names of the young DOGE engineers - first identified by Wired - who demanded access to the U.S. Treasury's computer systems, Musk replied, "You have committed a crime." Hours later, the account was gone, replaced by a message saying it had been suspended for violating X's rules.
On Monday, Musk shared a chain of posts from conservative media figures criticizing the General Services Administration's tech arm, a unit known as 18F that was credited with developing the IRS's self-serve "Direct File" software, as "far left." One of the posts falsely claimed that Direct File "puts the government in charge of preparing people's tax returns for them," a post that now appears on X with a rebutting fact-check from the site's own "Community Notes" program.
That didn't stop Musk from quoting the posts and adding his own cryptic, headline-making message: "That group has been deleted." In fact, members of the unit say it still exists - but its X account no longer does. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.
It is on X, not in some office or restaurant, that Republican politicians, tech industry executives and conservative influencers gather to post messages praising Musk's work, backing his stances and posting fodder for his arguments. The implicit hope is that Musk will reply or repost them approvingly to the platform's largest audience - and now that he's setting priorities for the Trump administration, perhaps even act on them.
On Sunday, Ryan Petersen, CEO of the San Francisco-based logistics firm Flexport, reached Musk directly with an X post that began, "Dear @DOGE please look into the U.S. Mint in San Francisco," suggesting it should be shut down and repurposed. An hour later, at 4:18 a.m. Eastern time, Musk replied, "Noted," prompting Petersen to repost the interaction with the caption: "Can't believe this app is only $8."
A Washington Post analysis shows Musk has dramatically ramped up his already prolific posting on X since October, sending more than 3,000 posts and replies each month - or more than 100 a day. That's about four times the volume of posts he sent in the first quarter of last year.
Eddie Perez, a former director for civic integrity at Twitter who is now a board member of the nonprofit Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Musk worked during the campaign to turn X into "a right-wing propaganda machine for Trump." Now that the billionaire is a key figure in the Trump administration, Perez said, "he's using X like a wire service to announce consequential and unlawful decisions about the federal government, as if he is CEO for all Americans."
The way Musk has used X to rally support for the Trump administration's rapid disassembly of the U.S. Agency for International Development exemplifies the platform's power as a sort of party whip.
While Trump and his then-nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made it clear in January that they would target USAID for cuts - as the conservative Heritage Foundation had proposed in its Project 2025 blueprint - the situation seemed to escalate over the weekend.
On Sunday, an account called Autism Capital posted that two senior officials at USAID were put on leave for trying to prevent DOGE employees from accessing the agency's computer systems. Musk shared Autism Capital's post on X and added an ominous message: "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die."
While Democrats reacted with shock - Could Musk really kill USAID? What did he mean by "criminal organization"? - conservative and far-right X accounts joined Musk in jubilation.
"By closing USAID, Trump and Musk have toppled the most gigantic global terror organization in history," posted Milo Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting a racist harassment campaign before Musk reinstated him in 2022. Musk shared Yiannopoulos's post, adding a bull's eye emoji.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, Musk reiterated his intentions on an audio live stream on X with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and others, who endorsed them. Ernst has positioned herself as a top Musk ally in Congress, where she heads up a new Senate DOGE Caucus.
Another Capitol Hill partner is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), whose X account Musk also reinstated from a permanent ban. She heads a DOGE subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee and was tagged and praised by Musk in an X post Monday, responding to a report that her subcommittee will call the chief executives of NPR and PBS to testify on allegations of liberal bias on their publicly funded networks. A day later, Greene announced on X that she's introducing a bill "abolishing" USAID.
It isn't just Republican lawmakers lining up to back Musk on X.
On Monday, interim U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin Jr. sought to lend legal heft to Musk's anger at those who published the identities of DOGE employees. He posted on X, "Dear @elon, Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled."
The letter, marked "SENT VIA X: @elonmusk," pledged to "pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people."
While threatening government employees is illegal, publishing their names is generally protected by the First Amendment. Musk himself has done it as recently as November, when he targeted government employees whose jobs he deemed wasteful or fraudulent, leading at least one to delete her social media accounts.
The lionization of Musk and his work remaking the government has given the once freewheeling platform a boosterish tone. "I'm worried about X becoming effectively state media," said Dartmouth College political science professor Brendan Nyhan.
But while Democrats and some legal scholars have decried Musk's reliance on a handful of young coders with no government experience to seize federal infrastructure, including payment systems inside the U.S. Treasury, tech insiders on X saw it another way.
Influential industry figures argued on their X accounts that they felt safer in the hands of "cracked" engineers such as Luke Farritor, a former SpaceX intern who won a prize last year for decoding an ancient scroll. Two posts mocking an image that said, "Who are these little boys? And why are they in charge of our money?" were viewed more than 3 million times combined.
X has become a Musk echo chamber in part by design.
On Twitter, the replies to popular tweets like Musk's were often a battleground for clashing worldviews, with opposing responses vying for likes. But one of the most influential changes Musk made to the platform was to prioritize replies from users who pay a monthly fee for X Premium, which also gives them the iconic blue verification badge once reserved for celebrities and media figures.
As liberals and others disillusioned with Musk's X have either left the platform or declined to pay for subscriptions, the top replies to the most popular posts are now often dominated by conservatives and Musk acolytes. That can lend a sense of broad agreement to posts that espouse conservative stances, including Musk's.
A top reply to Musk's poll asking whether he should "audit the IRS" came from a verified X user named Arthur MacWaters. His bio identifies him as the 27-year-old CEO and co-founder of Legion Health, a start-up offering "AI-enabled psychiatry," and an alumnus of the Silicon Valley start-up incubator Y Combinator. His response: "Shoot I pressed 'yes' too quick and [didn't] realize 'F yes' was an option."
Ernst, the senator from Iowa, reposted Musk's poll Tuesday with her own answer: "Yes, and I have a bill to do just that! My Audit the IRS Act will audit the auditors and fire the more than 800 IRS agents who owe millions of dollars in back taxes."
Within 45 minutes, Musk had reposted Ernst's repost of his post, adding "Awesome" with a sunglasses emoji. That helped her post reach some 13 million views - nearly 2,000 times more than the nearly 7,000 views she had garnered when she posted about the act in January, without Musk's amplification.
While Twitter has never boasted as many users as Facebook or YouTube, it has long been influential in politics as an "agenda-setting tool to talk about preferred issues and reinforce specific points of view," said Annelise Russell, a professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky.
"The biggest asset of Twitter, and now X, has always been its ability to reorient agendas, change what people are talking about," Russell said.
While Trump now posts primarily on his own social network, Truth Social, Musk's account commands singular influence on X. As its owner, he controls its workings - and everyone knows where to find him.
On Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers gathered outside the U.S. Treasury, asking to be let in to observe DOGE's activities there, but they were locked out. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-New Mexico) posted a video on X from outside the building, saying they demanded to speak with Musk and his team.
Musk quickly surfaced - not in person, but on X, where he responded to Stansbury's post with an apparently AI-generated image of himself sitting with arms crossed behind a desk, with the caption: "Can I help you?"
As of Thursday, Stansbury's post had garnered about 885,000 views on X. Musk's reply got 28 million.
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