Nearly nine months ago, then-candidate Donald Trump delivered a new campaign pledge: If elected to a second term, the Republican said, he’d appoint conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk to lead some kind of government “efficiency” panel.
To hear the then-candidate tell it, the endeavor would work miracles: The Musk-led commission, Trump boasted, would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars,” and implement “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”
For a variety of reasons, none of this made any sense. Indeed, Musk lacked any meaningful experience in auditing, federal budgeting, or even the basics of how the federal government worked. Trump nevertheless won a second term; his top campaign donor was rewarded with a White House office; and the Department of Government Efficiency got to work.
In December, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman spoke to a senior Republican aide who predicted that the entire endeavor would likely end in “disaster.” As Musk officially exits, the prediction appears relevant anew. NBC News reported:
Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO whom President Donald Trump enlisted to cut waste in the federal government, started offboarding from his role Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News, a day after he criticized a Republican bill to fund much of Trump’s agenda. Two sources later confirmed to NBC News that Musk’s more than 114-day long tenure as a special government employee officially concluded Wednesday evening.
His departure came immediately on the heels of Musk expressing public disappointment with the Republican Party’s inaptly named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” despite the president’s obsessive efforts to rally public and partisan support for the far-right legislation.
It’s easy to make the case that Musk’s tenure was, among other things, enormously consequential. The Republican megadonor and the DOGE operation he helped lead leave behind a legacy of shattered institutions, weakened public services, and fired civil servants who did nothing but serve their country well. The damage Musk did from his powerful position made people’s lives worse — both in the United States and abroad.
But as important as those truths are, it’s equally easy to conclude that Musk represents a failed experiment in governing.
Amid all the hype and tumult, it’s easy to lose sight of the billionaire’s original remit: Trump tasked Musk with leading an effort to cut spending and make the federal government more efficient.
As Musk slinks away, the facts prove that government spending went up, not down, during his tenure, and his DOGE endeavor made the government less efficient, not more.
Even the “savings” he claimed to have found proved illusory, misleading, or both. Musk’s goals went unmet. His promises went unfulfilled. He envisioned one set of results but delivered the opposite. All the while, Musk managed to inflict incredible harm to his public reputation and his private businesses, which leaves a stain that will be difficult to wash off. As for the future, the billionaire’s political influence will linger — I doubt very much that we’ve heard the last of Musk as a partisan operator — and there are lingering questions about the ton of personal data he was able to scoop up about the American public while he was a part of the administration. But at least for now, if Musk walks away from this experiment with his head held high, his satisfaction is misplaced.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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