Musk: What did he achieve in Washington?

Elon Musk leaves his government job but not after bruising his image, slashing aid and firing thousands

Elon Musk
The billionaire didn't fail because "his ambitions were too grand." He failed because "they were so pathetically small."
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Elon Musk says it was X Æ A-Xii, his 5-year-old son, who gave him the black eye he sported during last week's farewell Oval Office meeting with President Trump. But that bruise was "an unmistakable metaphor for his tumultuous government service," said Jonathan Allen and Zoë Richards in NBCNews.com. From the start of his 130-day stint as a "special government employee," the Department of Government Efficiency boss waged open war on the federal bureaucracy, firing workers by the thousands and gutting entire agencies—most notably USAID—with the stated goal of slashing $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk never came close. By DOGE's own dubious figures, it saved a mere $175 billion, and Musk's "haphazard, inhumane, and counterproductive" cuts could end up costing taxpayers $135 billion this year alone, by one analysis. "Trump's favorite weird billionaire" destroyed his own reputation in the process, said Monica Hesse in The Washington Post. Tesla sales are in free fall and his favorability rating now hovers in the 30s. This isn't just a result of the Nazi salute, or the chain saw, or the "14-ish children," or allegations—denied by Musk—that his rampage through Washington was fueled by a cocktail of ketamine, MDMA, Adderall, and psychedelic mushrooms. It was that the planet's richest person, with the freedom to do anything he wanted, "chose to bring American governance to its knees."

Musk is leaving with understandable bitterness, said Dace Potas in USA Today. He made a "genuine effort" to cut government waste, at great personal cost, only for Republicans to draft a "big, beautiful" spending bill that will add $3.6 trillion to the deficit over a decade. Musk slammed the bill this week as a "disgusting abomination" and hinted he might try to unseat Republicans who backed it in the 2026 midterms. DOGE was doomed from the start, said Mark Antonio Wright in National Review. The "government's financial crisis" stems from decades of overspending on Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare—programs that only Congress can cut—not now-terminated funding for "transgender puppet shows in Guatemala." With his "sky-high promises" of balanced budgets, Musk set himself up for failure.

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