It would not be an exaggeration to call Musk’s DC tenure controversial. As a man accustomed to getting what he wants and acting as a powerful executive, he roamed Washington with a figurative chainsaw, cutting the budget, laying off workers, and audaciously seizing power. Musk’s brutal behavior angered government employees and alienated him from future colleagues like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Eventually, the bad blood reached fever pitch, and Musk had a minor physical altercation with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant.
politico Details of the surprising results. By the end of May, DOGE and Musk had lost President Trump’s favor, and White House aides began to push back more forcefully against the fledgling government agency. When Musk was officially bid farewell by the White House on May 30, it also ousted his right-hand man Steve Davis.
But Davis, an engineer who had worked closely with Musk for more than 20 years, including on DOGE, refused to go. He stepped up to try to take the reins, but that didn’t go over well with many of DOGE’s remaining employees. But others remained loyal, essentially splitting the department in two.
When people uncomfortable with Davis’ leadership, given that he was no longer a government employee, tried to plan the future of DOGE without him, Davis accused them of staging a coup. The White House quickly overruled Davis’s loyalists, ending Davis’s brief attempt to consolidate control in less than two weeks.
This was followed by a series of reorganizations, changes in leadership, and ultimately, the end of DOGE as a centralized organization. When? reuters When I reached out to the White House earlier this month to ask about the status of DOGE, I was told, “It doesn’t exist.”
Musk arrived in Washington with big ambitions to cut trillions of dollars in government spending. Instead, during his brief time in DC, government spending actually increased, and he left behind many burned bridges.
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