Elon Musk, the billionaire industrialist who donated $275 million to help Donald Trump win reelection and then served as the public face of the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, left Washington, D.C., on Friday. Trump celebrated his 130 days of unelected service, but elsewhere the fruits of Musk’s labors inspired fierce debate.
“Elon Musk departs DOGE with a horrific legacy,” wrote liberal columnist Paul Waldman, who highlighted “the chaos he brought to the federal government that serves all of us, and the deaths he is at least partly responsible for around the world” due to cuts in American foreign aid.
Focus on the Family, a pro-life group that opposes abortion, didn’t address the deaths but praised “Elon Musk’s Free Speech Legacy.” Focus thanked Musk for purchasing Twitter and welcoming back Donald Trump — who was banned after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and other conservative voices.
Musk may be gone, but DOGE remains. Many of Musk’s hand-picked lieutenants remain in offices across the federal government. As the Heritage Foundation put it: “Elon Musk may be stepping away from DOGE, but the mission isn’t over. The strong team he built will keep exposing waste and working toward true government reform.”
Musk may be gone, but DOGE remains.
More important, many DOGE cuts could become permanent through legislation if the GOP-led Senate passes Trump’s “big beautiful bill” for the federal budget.
That same bill, however, has drawn condemnation from Musk, who called it a “disgusting abomination” because it increases the federal deficit under the guise of budget cutting.
Musk originally promised DOGE would cut $2 trillion from the $6.8 trillion federal budget before revising his estimate down to $1 trillion. DOGE recently claimed it had saved $175 billion, but those numbers have been reliably unreliable and regularly revised.
Elon Musk, left, receives a chainsaw from Argentina’s President Javier Milei as they speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
There are now 120,000 fewer government employees, and many programs and departments have been shrunk. But remaining federal workers say these rapid and tumultuous changes have made government far less efficient. Cuts were made with a chainsaw, not a business plan, say workers who now struggle to perform basic tasks.
DOGE and its supporters claim budget cuts are aimed at stamping out “waste, fraud and abuse.” But many of the cuts were explicitly ideologically driven, such as efforts to stamp out diversity programs.
DOGE has claimed many programs engaged in fraud, which is punishable by law, but so far, Trump’s Justice Department has pursued zero fraud prosecutions.
Many of DOGE’s budget cuts and firings already have been overturned by courts, and many more lawsuits are ongoing. If the government loses these cases, damage settlements could reduce DOGE’s savings and dim Musk’s legacy.
Former United States Agency for International Development (USAID) employees terminated after the Trump administration dismantled the agency collect their personal belongings at the USAID headquarters on February 27 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Still the richest man on earth
Musk is the richest man on earth, and debate around his legacy includes his role in cutting billions of dollars’ worth of lifesaving aid for some of the poorest people on earth. USAID, the agency formerly responsible for dispersing billions in foreign aid, was largely dismantled by DOGE.
Judges have ruled the USAID cuts illegal and ordered that some aid funds should be restored, but the Trump administration has been slow to restore funding.
Cuts to USAID and to PEPFAR resulted in 300,000 unnecessary deaths in four months.
As a result, people are dying. The estimates vary, but New York Times columnist David Brooks told PBS News Hour the cuts to USAID and to PEPFAR, which provided AIDS relief, had resulted in 300,000 unnecessary deaths in the first four months of the Trump administration.
The administration denies that budget cuts have resulted in any deaths. “Pro-life” advocates have not identified the deaths as a life issue.
Musk is the visionary owner and/or founder of X, Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink (which makes implantable brain-computer interfaces), Starlink (which offers internet access via thousands of low-orbit satellites), and the Boring Company (which drills tunnels, and plans to drill on Mars to sustain human life there). Many of these companies work with the U.S. government as well as other nations.
He used to be liberal. He voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Joe Biden in 2020. Liberals loved buying his snazzy electric cars. Then Musk changed sides, funding Trump’s campaign and using X as a MAGA megaphone.
Elon Musk holds his son named X Æ A-XII during a visit at the company’s electric car plant in Gruenheide near Berlin, eastern Germany, on March 13, 2024,. (Photo by ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Musk never has conformed to conservative family values, though. He says intelligent men like himself should seed the earth with many offspring, and he has fathered at least 14 children with a variety of women, including his first three wives, and other women, one of whom is an executive at Musk’s Neuralink. Some of his children were born via IVF, which pro-family groups oppose.
Musk often took his 5-year-old son, named X, to the White House, where X was photographed and filmed by the media. The boy’s mother, the musician known as Grimes, is currently battling Musk for custody of X, and she says the boy’s public appearances in D.C. violate their custody settlement, according to The New York Times.
The Times also reported on Musk’s drug use during the 2024 campaign. When he traveled, he took along a medication box holding 20 different kinds of pills, including Aderall, which is prescribed for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and is also sold illegally to enhance performance. Musk also consumed psychedelic mushrooms, Ecstasy and enough ketamine to harm his bladder.
Musk also consumed psychedelic mushrooms, Ecstasy and enough ketamine to harm his bladder.
‘Free speech’ advocate
Under Musk’s leadership, the social media site X stopped moderating posts, leading to a rapid surge in pornography, misinformation, antisemitism and advocacy of white supremacy. Conservative groups that once had been censured rejoiced, including Focus, which said the “chaos” of Musk’s X was preferable to the “deception” of the mainstream media.
“At a time when conservative Christians were being silenced by the big tech social media titans, Musk stepped in and wrestled the reigns of Twitter back from the brink of a dictatorial stranglehold,” said Focus in its article on Musk’s legacy.
Focus supports Musk’s pro-natalist advocacy but criticizes his freewheeling approach to family: “Separating children from marriage is a major part of the problem. The success and strength of cultures rise and fall on the marital union. Advocating for more children outside of marriage won’t solve the problem but only exacerbate it.”
Musk’s 130 days of DOGE caused dramatic declines in both Musk’s favorability and that of Tesla, his iconic electric vehicle brand. As sales plunged around the world, vigilantes attacked Tesla dealerships with bombs and gunfire and vandalized charging stations. (Tesla stock rose in March after Trump promoted the cars at the White House.)
But DOGE wasn’t all bad news for Musk’s companies. U.S. negotiators and State Department officials are promoting Starlink satellite internet service to other nations as they negotiate trade deals, according to the Washington Post, which accessed diplomatic cables promoting Starlink.
That’s just the beginning of the benefits Musk has reaped from his days as “Dogefather,” the word printed on his black T-shirt at Friday’s farewell press conference.
Columnist Paul Waldman says Musk stands to gain plenty from his loyal service to Trump: “For all his complaints, Musk is getting most of what he really wanted. His time in the government coincided with the Trump administration shutting down many investigations Musk faced over his labor and environmental practices. The administration is also moving to direct billions of dollars in funding meant for rural broadband to his satellite company, and Trump’s new idea for a “Golden Dome” missile defense system looks like a contracting gravy train with Musk’s companies in the front car.”
Related articles:
House and Senate budget proposals would starve the poor and feed the rich, critics warn
Elon Musk dismantles evangelical ‘family values’
Project 2025, Elon Musk and the American coup d’état | Opinion by Basil Dannebohm
The unchecked influence of Elon Musk | Opinion by Lisa Dunson