President Trump and Elon Musk took in the Division I wrestling championship in Philadelphia on Saturday. But some of Mr. Trump’s supporters expressed complicated feelings about his billionaire adviser.
“All right, Philadelphia, show us your guns! Show us your muscles!”
It was Saturday night in Philly, and the Wells Fargo Center was packed with brawny men for the N.C.A.A. men’s Division I wrestling championship. “Macho Man” by Village People blared as the stadium’s announcer turned the camera back on the crowd and told it to flex.
Down beside the ring sat President Trump and his entourage. There were a few loyal Republican congressmen; his chief of staff, Susie Wiles; his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; and, as is so often the case these days, Elon Musk.
Mr. Musk wore a black SpaceX hoodie and hovered two seats down from Mr. Trump. Throughout the night, college wrestling champions would approach to meet the president and to get a picture with him. That often meant getting one with Mr. Musk, too. This is very much a two-for-the-price-of-one presidency.
The wrestling fans who made their way to Philly were not entirely sure if that was what they bargained for when they voted for Mr. Trump, as many of them indeed did. The crowd was largely made up of cornfed men with cauliflower ears from places like Ohio, Missouri, Iowa and Pennsylvania, and while almost all of them said they were pleased with Mr. Trump’s time in office so far, interviews with more than a dozen attendees revealed more complicated feelings that were beginning to surface about Mr. Musk.
“Not a big fan of Elon,” said Blaize Cabell, a 32-year-old wrestling coach from Independence, Iowa, who nonetheless remains a big fan of the president. He said he viewed Mr. Musk’s career as a businessman as a series of failures and buyouts and said that the billionaire was “making a lot of callous cuts,” citing the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month, the department fired thousands of experts and then scrambled to hire them back.
“I don’t even know what to think of him at this point,” David Berkovich, a 24-year-old wrestler and graduate school student from Brooklyn, said of Mr. Musk. “He’s just there all the time.”