On the 100th day of his second term, President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet for a conference with the information that he was just beginning. But for one of the high-profile characters in the room, it had the experience of a bird song.  ,
” You have been treated badly, but the vast majority of people in this country definitely respect and appreciate you, and this whole area can say that really strongly”, Trump said of Musk in what sounded like a good. You’ve definitely been a lot of a support. You opened up a lot of vision as to what can be done, and we just want to congratulate you very much”.
Trump continued,” And you know you’re invited to stay as long as you want, but at some place he wants to return home to his trucks.” At that point, the Cabinet tumble into a round of applause. With one Gulf of America cover stacked on top of another on his nose, Musk quipped,” They say I wear a lot of clothes.” ” Even my hat has a hat”.
When Musk entered Trump’s inner sphere during last year’s presidential battle, some thought the addition of a second strong-willed businessman star was putting a helmet on a helmet. It was widely anticipated that This Town doesn’t be large enough for the two of them, with Trump later resenting the focus the tech giant received.
That doesn’t seem to had happened. Trump has occasionally seemed uneasy that the social unrest caused by their organization has hurt Musk’s organizations. But even if they are not parting on negative words, Musk is also leaving. At the end of the fortnight, his particular state employment status is scheduled to disappear. He reportedly told Tesla owners in a phone late last month that he would scale back his DOGE labor to one or two times a year until his commitment ended.
The ideal time to review what Musk’s administration has revealed about the difficulty of reducing national government saving is now. The federal budget is set to eclipse$ 7 trillion. The first half of the fiscal year has already generated a budget deficit of$ 1.3 trillion, and it will undoubtedly exceed$ 2.2 trillion before it is finished. This is when there is no recession (yet ), the United States is not at war ( directly ), and the pandemic has been brought under control.
However, the cancellation of a few Politico Pro subscriptions here and there and small ( by Washington standards ) contracts there caused a reaction as if Murray Rothbard had come back to life and, as expected, would unleash a new wave of anarcho-capitalism. The media coverage was unremittingly angry. The second significant demonstrations of the second Trump administration were caused by genuine, threatened, and imaginable DOGE cuts.
DOGE was conceived as a task force to battle waste in the federal government, analogous to the Grace Commission, chaired by businessman J. Peter Grace ( himself a wealthy longtime Democrat ) under Ronald Reagan, or the National Partnership for Reinventing Government headed by then-Vice President Al Gore under Bill Clinton. It became a thunder rod for critics and a wonderful hope for small-government liberals who feared the GOP had abandoned fiscal conservative during the Trump era with Musk as the leader.
Piece of this is because Musk dreamed great about making the government smaller. It was first unclear whether Congress would be able to recommend changes to the budget or more or less formally as he initially claimed he believed he had cut$ 2 trillion. The true figure will likely be significantly less grand. For instance, the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed piece of renegotiation plans total roughly$ 9.3 billion in breaks. Politicians would need to vote on the ideas.  ,
In three strategies for the president, Trump has not run as a Barry Goldwater-style government-cutter. He resisted the rights reforms that former House Speaker Paul Ryan advocated even in the Democratic primary elections. He was rewarded for this with the help of a more downscale political alliance than many past GOP political contenders. Trump won the majority of voters who made less than$ 100, 000 last year and carried those who made less than$ 50, 000. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won those making more than$ 100, 000 by the same margin, according to exit polls.
In his two prior activities, Trump made more efforts to big- and small-l republicans in 2024 than he did in the 1990s. He also spoke at the Libertarian National Convention. In 2016, the Libertarian Party’s nominations received nearly 4.5 million vote, and they will receive more than 1.8 million in 2020. Trump was seeking to get the famous vote for the first time.
However, many of Trump’s campaign promises focused on meetings and works of mercy ( he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, a libertarian cause images ), even in this context. He also vowed to make Expand and set Musk in charge of it but did much to lay the groundwork for what it was about to try. Musk claimed that his goal was to “assure that this administration will have madly dedicated small-government revolutionaries.”
If Musk displayed the devotion of a turn, that’s because he was himself just a new soldier in this small-government trend. He had been a moderate Democrat, a brilliant but eccentric business and brilliantly successful businessman. It was not expected that he would help Trump at all, much less become one of the previously and future government’s biggest financial donors.
The tech baron’s super PACs were not only squandered with the tech baron’s money. They, along with conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s organizational muscle, supplied much of Trump’s ground game in critical states. In what was thought to be a lopsided contest, Husk and Kirk squared off against Harris ‘ experienced Democratic field operation. ( Trump swept all seven battleground states. )
The founders of SpaceX and Tesla also purchased and renamed the social media platform X. This led to Trump’s return from social media exile and helped many low-propensity voters find a way around traditional media sources that were hostile to Trump. Former President Joe Biden lamented as he left office in his farewell address that a “tech-industrial complex” was emerging that “poses real dangers for our country,” as opposed to the military-industrial complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower lamented.
” Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power”, Biden said. The free press is deteriorating. Editors are disappearing. Social media is putting an end to fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit”.
The Biden administration’s efforts to censor such platforms under the guise of fighting disinformation contributed a large portion to Musk’s interest in purchasing X. Biden was unbowed, saying,” We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power”.
However, Musk wasn’t exactly a populist-nationalist like Trump or Vice President JD Vance. He was sending out videos of free-market economist Milton Friedman extolling the virtues of capitalism and limited government. That’s what some Trump supporters believed the MAGA-fied Republican Party was abusing, according to some supporters. Populists such as Steve Bannon viewed Musk with suspicion, both for his emerging techno-libertarianism and his extensive business ties to China.
Musk did, however, receive the desired job. In an announcement as president-elect, Trump said DOGE” will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies”. This will send shock waves through the system, and anyone who works in government waste, which is a lot of people, according to Mussk, according to Mussk!
Shock waves might have been an understatement. DOGE demonstrated that nonprofit organizations and other recipients of federal largesse felt entitled to tax dollars, which was the biggest part of the fiscal crisis even though it could not really touch entitlements. Some federal judges agreed. Those who made a claim to the taxpayers ‘ money were not responsible for the burden of proof, but those who suggested cutting it.  ,
In stark contrast to his first term, Musk’s efforts to reduce and restructure the federal workforce were consistent with Trump’s desire for the elected president to take control of the Washington bureaucracy. Although Musk sought to assure the public he wasn’t being” capricious”, to many, his efforts seemed scattershot ( such as when he had emails sent to federal employees asking them to summarize their recent work under threat of termination, often contradicted by Trump’s own agency heads ).
Federal employees are also typically sharp-spoken and disproportionately educated in politics. They have proximity to the news media and are quick to share their stories, which soon became the basis of countless headlines. Musk frequently moves quickly and then reverses what he had broken in his business ventures before going back. The bureaucracy is a slow-moving beast that is historically less responsive to that kind of creative destruction.
Musk was in some ways a bad messenger for a government-shrinking initiative, especially one that resulted in layoffs. He was arguably the richest man in the world. He had none of Trump’s blue-collar appeal. Without the Bainiac’s bedside manner, he was more likely to be depicted as a Mitt Romney-style “vulture capitalist.”  ,
Only 35 % of people approve of Musk’s handling of DOGE, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, while 57 % disapprove. Musk’s poll numbers have generally been lower than Trump’s. The prominent role that Musk played earlier this year in a significant Wisconsin judicial election may have had a negative effect.  ,
When Trump and Musk’s political rivals started to rebel, their business interests turned into a welcoming target. Tesla dealerships and even the electric vehicles were beset by vandalism and worse. The Trump administration referred to the incidents as domestic terrorism. Tesla’s customer base skewed Democratic, which set it up for a fall in profits once Musk became so inextricably linked with Trump. elected Democrats, including the governor. Tim Walz (D-MN), the party’s vice presidential nominee in the last election, celebrated drops in Tesla’s stock price — despite, in Walz’s case, governing a state in which the pension fund is invested in the company’s stocks.  ,
” I should say also, we will make mistakes”, Musk said of DOGE’s work. ” We won’t be perfect,” he declared. The public, and especially the Democrats and their media allies, were not so forgiving.
In Trump’s second term, there have been far fewer palace intrigue stories, but Musk is frequently at the center of them. No true believer in the tariffs agenda, he called top Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro a “moron” on X, prompting a grinning White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to say “boys will be boys” when asked about the exchange in a briefing.  ,
Musk appeared to pooh-pooh a$ 500 billion artificial intelligence project touted by the White House, saying on X that the investors “don’t actually have the money”. Trump, however, was understanding. ” He hates one of the people in the deal”, the president said of Musk. ” The deal’s participants are very, very smart people. But, Elon, one of the people he happens to hate. I also harbor some racial hatreds.
In March, Musk clashed at a Cabinet meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over reforms at the State Department. Additionally, the DOGE chief and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was dealing with the aftermath of fatal airline crashes, engaged in a heated argument. Afterward, Trump publicly clarified that his Senate-confirmed Cabinet officials and agency heads would make final decisions about staffing levels, not Musk. He added that the administration would be “very precise” in personnel decisions and use a “scalpel, rather than the hatchet” to make cuts.
The spat over whether Musk should be granted a secret Pentagon briefing — Axios quoted Trump as saying,” What the f*** is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t leave,” which may have even contributed to the problems of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In this context, one wonders whether Trump’s Cabinet was cheering for Musk’s service on April 30 or his impending departure.  ,
The first dustup of its kind during the second Trump transition was an apparent rift with Musk’s original DOGE partner, entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Real crime was Ramaswamy’s off-message cultural commentary in support of H-1B visas, which he claimed native-born Americans seemed to have watched too much Saved by the Bell, and he was preparing to run for governor of Ohio in 2026. Either way, he was out by the beginning of this year.
As Musk himself steps down, DOGE may experience a more significant reshuffle. The identity of the group’s administrator, officially Amy Gleason rather than Musk, has always been a D. C. pub trivia question. Could the project become mired in the shuffle of tariffs and general Trump world tumult due to a less prominent public face?
Or perhaps Musk isn’t going far. After he had implemented many of his desired changes, fellow entrepreneur and Trump adviser David Sacks compared Musk’s role in DOGE to his initial strong focus on X when he took over the business. That could certainly happen with Musk’s White House involvement as well.
With programs and a workforce that have taken on a new life of their own, what Musk’s brief time in Washington has demonstrated is how difficult it is to rein in the federal government. This is especially true since Congress has largely abdicated its constitutional duty on spending, as it has done in so many other areas. Even with the exception of Musk’s mercurial personality, these kinds of cuts DOGE could realistically pursue were less carefully targeted than they might have otherwise been.  ,
Additionally, it meant that DOGE, because it did not adhere to clear procedures and procedures, could not garner the full support of the few small-government and libertarian voices in the capital. Whether that is more indicative of DOGE’s shortcomings or those of Beltway libertarianism will be hotly debated for at least the remainder of Trump’s term.
However, it is legitimate to wonder whether Musk’s merry band of machete men caused an excessive political backlash without delaying the nation’s untenable fiscal trajectory, which might turn off potential spending cuts at a time when some budgetary discipline is urgently needed.  ,
Additionally, Musk’s young staff was depicted as a group of careless tech bros with little knowledge of the government. Perhaps they should have been paired with more experienced government hands, combining both inside and outside perspectives. In any case, the administration could have sooner reacted to this narrative. When Musk and his assistants finally appeared together on Fox News with Bret Baier in late March, they didn’t seem so radical. However, the narrative had already begun.
AFTER 100 DAYS, CAN TRUMP PULL OFF A SECOND GREAT POLITICAL COMEBACK?
Any attempt to reduce government spending must start with waste, fraud, and abuse. Wasteful spending is the least legitimate. It also demonstrates how poorly organized government procedures are and how utterly unrepentant Washington is of the taxpayer. But amid a debt and entitlements crisis, serious reform has to go well beyond waste.  ,
Let’s hope that this lesson, at least, is not wasted.
W. James Antle III is the magazine’s executive editor, Washington Examiner.  ,
