The music was booming. The ballroom was packed. And Elon Musk was onstage, waving a chain saw in the air.

I had already seen other surreal sights at the Conservative Political Action Conference — a man with a cat on his shoulder, freshly pardoned Proud Boys roaming around — but it was clear that this would be one of the indelible images of the annual MAGA confab.

Musk roared — or was he just making a chain saw noise? This, he said, was the chain saw he was taking to the bureaucracy. “Chain saw,” he repeated for effect. He did not turn it on.

It was a gift from Javier Milei, the far-right Argentine president who stormed to power in 2023 and who has drawn effusive, at times almost graphic, praise from Musk.

The episode showed how Musk doesn’t just cozy up to right-wing leaders — he also seems to copy them.

In 2022, Milei, an economist and former media personality, released a “chain saw plan” that would have cut public spending and sharply reduced the number of ministries in Argentina’s government. Milei showed up to campaign rallies with a functioning chain saw — and his supporters followed suit with replicas — that represented his demonization of a group he called “the political caste.”