Elon Musk leaves legacy of self-destruction at DOGE
Zachary Basu
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/25/elon-musk-doge-legacy
Elon Musk arrived in Washington as the most powerful political outsider ever, brimming with Silicon Valley
swagger and bipartisan
buy-in for his goal
of streamlining the federal government.
- He's
leaving with
his reputation wounded, relationships severed, companies in crisis,
fortune diminished — and little to show for DOGE but chaos and
contested savings.
Why it
matters: Musk may not have
achieved his audacious goal
of cutting $2 trillion from
America's debt, but the disruption he unleashed inside the federal government —
for better or for worse — will reverberate for decades.
Zoom in: Musk has publicly acknowledged the enormous toll that
DOGE — which he's characterized as a patriotic, existential project — has
taken on his private life.
- He's still beloved by President Trump, but his favorability ratings have plummeted
amid scrutiny of DOGE's mass layoffs, sweeping program cuts, and
unprecedented access to Americans' personal data.
- For Wisconsin's
Supreme Court election this month, Democrats painted Musk — who poured $25 million
into the race — as a corrupt, unelected oligarch with his eyes set on
dismantling Social Security. The message stuck, and
Musk's GOP-backed candidate lost.
By the
numbers: Tesla, battered by boycotts, protests and even firebombings, saw its net
income plunge 71%
in the first quarter — triggering Musk's decision this week to
scale back his involvement in DOGE.
- Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a longtime
Tesla bull, celebrated the end of "this dark chapter," but
warned: "The brand damage caused by Musk in the White House/DOGE over
the past few months will not go away."
- Musk's net worth has declined by a staggering
$122 billion this
year — nearly matching the $160 billion in government savings claimed by DOGE, which budget experts
believe is wildly inflated.
- Musk, who bankrolled Trump's campaign to the tune
of $288
million,
still remains the world's richest man.
Zoom out: Inside the government, Musk's slash-and-burn campaign
has fundamentally reshaped how federal agencies operate — and in some cases,
whether they operate at all.
- DOGE spent one of its first weekends "feeding USAID into the wood
chipper," gutting an agency that millions of people around the world
rely on for food, water, shelter, disease surveillance and disaster
relief.
- Musk's team then tried to
"delete" the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau, a financial watchdog created after the Great
Recession to protect people from being ripped off by banks and other
institutions.
- His DOGE team has since gone agency by agency,
infiltrating sensitive
IT networks —
including the Treasury
Department's centralized payments system — in the name of rooting out
"waste, fraud and abuse."
In some
cases, DOGE has exposed
seemingly frivolous examples of government spending, like a $360,000 grant to reduce social discrimination of recyclers in
Bolivia.
- The administration's aggressive marketing of
these findings has helped reinforce the widely held view that Washington
is bloated, inefficient and overdue for reform.
- But the DOGE team's credibility has repeatedly
been undermined by
mistakes, duplications and false assumptions uploaded — then quietly
deleted — on its online "wall of receipts."
- Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — one of
several Cabinet officials to clash with Musk — accused
the billionaire of
overpromising and under-delivering in a West Wing shouting match last
week.
What they're
saying: "DOGE's
verified savings have been less than 1/10 of 1% of federal spending," says
Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow and budget expert at the conservative Manhattan
Institute.
- "There have been embarrassing accounting
errors, lots of public statements that turned out to be false or
misleading, or actions slapped back by the courts."
Between the
lines: Republicans have
celebrated as DOGE has slashed wasteful contracts, canceled leases and fired
unproductive employees. But its cuts to the
IRS threaten to
reverse any progress made on reducing the deficit.
- "The spending savings are so small that they
will be undoubtedly overwhelmed by the significant tax revenue losses
which result from gutting IRS tax enforcement," Riedl tells Axios.
- "It makes a mockery of claims that DOGE is
really just about cutting deficits."
The bottom
line: Musk will remain a
force in American politics long after his DOGE days are over, especially with
his acolytes strategically installed in high-profile positions throughout the
federal government.
- "I can't speak more highly about any
individual," Trump told reporters Wednesday, heaping praise on his
billionaire adviser and top donor.
- "He was treated very unfairly by — I guess
you'd call it the public, some of the public," Trump added. "He
loves the country. He doesn't need to do this."
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