As Elon Musk gained power in Washington, his popularity has fallen, an AP-NORC poll finds

By Chris Megerian and Amelia Thomson-Deveaux The Associated Press WASHINGTON Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary brushing aside critics and skeptics to become the richest person on the planet But as Musk gained power in Washington in latest months his popularity has waned according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Society Affairs Research Just of U S adults have a favorable view of Musk the chain-saw-wielding late-night-posting campaign-hat-wearing masses face of President Donald Trump s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal regime That share is down from in December It was a shame that he crashed and burned his reputation mentioned Ernest Pereira a Democrat who works as a lab technician in North Carolina He bought into his own hype The poll unveiled that about two-thirds of adults believe Musk has held too much influence over the federal establishment during the past sparse months although that influence may be coming to an end The billionaire entrepreneur is expected to leave his administration job in the coming weeks Musk is noticeably less popular than the overall effort to pare back the regime workforce which Trump has described as bloated and corrupt About half of U S adults believe the Republican president has gone too far on reducing the size of the federal workforce while roughly in think he is on target and want him to go even further Retiree Susan Wolf of Pennsylvania believes the federal establishment is too big but Musk has made a mess of everything I don t trust him she declared I don t think he knows what he s doing Wolf who is not registered with a political party mentioned Musk s private sector success does not translate to Washington He thinks you run a regime like you run a business And you don t do that she disclosed One is for the benefit of the people and the other is for the benefit of the corporation Much of the downsizing has been done through so-called the Department of Cabinet Efficiency or DOGE which was Musk s brainchild during last year s campaign Thousands of federal employees have been fired or pushed to quit contracts have been canceled and entire agencies have been brought to a standstill Musk has succeeded in providing a dose of shock therapy to the federal authorities but he has fallen short of other goals After talking about cutting spending by trillion he has set a much lower target of billion Even reaching that amount could prove challenging and DOGE has regularly overstated its progress He is expected to start dedicating more time to Tesla his electric automaker that has suffered plummeting revenue while he was working for Trump Musk stated investors on a modern conference call that now that the major work of establishing the Department of Executive Efficiency is done he expects to spend just a day or two per week on executive matters Musk in his work for the administration has continued a political evolution toward the right Although the South African-born entrepreneur was never easy to categorize ideologically he championed the fight against context change and often supported Democratic candidates Now he criticizes the woke mind virus and warns of the collapse of Western civilization from the threats of illegal migration and excess cabinet spending Musk s increasingly conservative politics are reflected in the polling Only about in independents and about in Democrats view Musk favorably compared with about in Republicans In addition while about in independents and about in Democrats believe Musk has too much influence only about in Republicans feel that way Mark Collins a warehouse manager from Michigan who has leaned Republican in fresh years noted Musk runs a nice tight ship at his companies and the leadership definitely demands tightening up He s cleaning up all the trash he disclosed I love what he s doing Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to be worried about being affected by modern cuts to federal ruling body agencies services or grants Just revealed they are extremely or very concerned that they or someone they know will be affected while about two-thirds of Democrats and of independents have those fears The AP-NORC poll of adults was conducted April - using a sample drawn from NORC s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel which is designed to be representative of the U S population The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus percentage points Get more Colorado news by signing up for our daily Your Morning Dozen email newsletter