If there was anyone who could rival Donald Trump for press coverage, it is Elon Musk.

The most recent issue of TIME magazine is a good case in point, in which the world’s richest man is pictured on the front cover behind the resolution desk in the White House. It features a deep dive into Musk’s “war” on the bureaucrats in Washington, DC, explaining how ongoing efforts to reshape America’s federal bureaucracy is qualitatively different from previous efforts. It details how the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has now been legally christened as a temporary working organisation under the former Department of Digital Services, which has been rebranded as the Department of DOGE services. This piece of bureaucratic jiu-jitsu is important because temporary organisations are exempt from many federal laws.

The TIME article, as well as a flood of lawsuits and legal injunctions, are a sign that the antibodies in Washington are starting to get to work. In the last few days, one of the outside experts brought in by Musk was forced to resign, as journalists discovered a long history of racist social media posts. To put it bluntly, a story like that is mostly an indication of how eagerly the Washington machinery would like to see these DOGE figures all go.

So, will they? So far, Elon Musk has proved more survivable than many people thought. Trump has stood by him too, dismissing the TIME cover out of hand. But other factions of the greater MAGA coalition already despise him — including, most prominently, Steve Bannon, who Musk called a “great talker but not a great doer” — and his fortunes are clearly very tied to the success or failure of DOGE itself. The problem Musk faces is not just that what he is doing is despised by federal employees, who certainly don’t appreciate it when outsiders come in and try to change things. It is also, in all likelihood, quite illegal, and even unconstitutional.

Ironically, it was a front cover on TIME that forced Bannon out of the White House during Trump’s first term. And while Musk may be serving as a useful foil for Trump by sucking up any incoming negative press coverage, the legal pitfalls that DOGE faces could upend the whole project. Indeed DOGE’s effort to exert control over the Government’s payment systems might very well contradict Article 1 of the United States constitution itself. It is Congress which is supposed to decide where the money will go, not the President, and certainly not outside billionaires who are riddled with conflicts of interest vis-a-vis the federal government.

In a recent interview for the New York Times, Steve Bannon himself had some harsh words for Musk, painting a picture of “Broligarchs” and real populists fighting for the soul of the MAGA movement. But Bannon also had some advice for Musk: if you’re going to make big budget cuts, you ought to start with the defence budget. That, in Bannon’s own words, would be a real way to demonstrate some “sincerity”; to show that the talk about fixing the broken system in Washington wasn’t all just talk.

Of course, cutting defence spending is where the rubber will meet the road for the MAGA coalition, something Bannon himself is very well aware of. Musk has deep ties to the US defence industry — he is, after all, one of the US government’s most prolific contractors — and making cuts to defence would also infuriate the more old guard Republican parts of Trump’s political coalition. But therein lies the crux of the issue: the MAGA coalition is inherently unstable, and it is home to political forces which now coexist in what is, at best, a marriage of convenience.

Once you start significantly cutting the budget, those tensions can no longer be avoided. Trump campaigned on a promise to not cut social security or medicare, but that promise is likely impossible to keep, given the budget situation. Musk may very well become the convenient point-man for those kinds of unpalatable cuts, which could turn him into a scapegoat.

There is of course another big risk to Musk’s political future. Trump is notoriously intolerant of people who try to outshine him or hog the spotlight, something which contributed significantly to Steve Bannon’s own fall from grace during the first administration. Today, Elon Musk is meeting with world leaders and giving speeches at party conferences, clearly relishing his newfound status as a political wunderkind. As long as times are good, as long as DOGE can project an aura of success, Musk will continue to soar. What will happen when the times turn bad is another matter; if or when that happens, Musk’s fall might turn out to be as rapid as Bannon’s.

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Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

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