EDITORIAL: Don’t ever trust this man with our government

It’s too bad the breakup of the Trump-Musk bromance that played out last week in a garish public collision of titanic egos didn’t happen months ago. It would have prevented damage to the federal government that may take years to repair.

Back in February, when Elon Musk declared on his social media platform, “I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another man,” DOGE squads of young Musk disciples were rampaging through federal agencies indiscriminately firing thousands of workers.

The most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world were best buddies who were kind to each other. Musk gave Trump $275 million for his presidential campaign. Trump gave Musk the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency.

As the DOGE leader, Musk announced he would cut $2 trillion in government expenditures, mainly by reducing the number of government workers. 

That boast now looks about as silly as his declaration of undying Trump love. Savings credited to DOGE total .02% of the promised $2 trillion—a paltry $2 billion—and there is ample reason to believe that in the final accounting, after repairing the damage, DOGE may well cost taxpayers more than it saved.

Musk and his minions knew nothing about how government agencies worked or what government workers did, and they could not have cared less about any harmful consequences of their mission. They fired by formula—a fixed percentage of agency employees had to lose their jobs to meet DOGE’s goals. 

Now the administration run by Musk’s erstwhile friend Donald Trump is rushing to rehire droves of dismissed federal workers because DOGE’s heedless assault on the federal workforce crippled agencies’ ability to provide indispensable services—weather forecasting and drug approval among others.

By March, DOGE was responsible for more than 275,000 federal job losses, including firings and retirements forced by the threat of firing. Many of those casualties of the DOGE crusade are now being invited—or begged, cajoled or ordered—to come back to work.

Several thousand Federal Drug Administration workers, including laboratory staff, were laid off. Weeks later, many of them were instructed to come back to their jobs.

An email to the workers obtained by the Washington Post informed them their dismissal “is officially rescinded and you will not be separated from employment. You are expected to return to duty the next business day following your receipt of this notice.”

Weeks after DOGE laid waste to NOAA, the agency’s National Weather Service emailed fired meteorologists, hydrologists, physical scientist and electronics technicians asking them to reapply for their jobs.

Soon after DOGE slashed the Agriculture Department workforce, the agency launched a program to rehire bird flu response workers.

Dramatically illustrating the arrogant incompetence of Musk’s firing squad, 17% of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s workforce was laid off, threatening the security of the nation’s 5,177 nuclear warheads. Someone in the Trump administration managed to figure out this was not in the best interests of the safety of the American people, and the workers were quickly rehired.

Musk and most of the people he brought in from his tech empire are gone from DOGE, but the damage they’ve done remains. In the case of America’s foreign aid programs, that damage is having tragic consequences.

DOGE shut down USAID by firing most of its workers, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of the minimal food and health care needed for subsistence. A Boston University study found that at least 96,000 people, many of them children, have died as a result.

Reacting to worldwide condemnation of the aid shut-down, the Trump administration is making a modest effort to mitigate its cruel consequences by having the State Department take over aid programs and rehire some aid workers.

That won’t erase what will always be the trademark of Musk’s disastrous foray into government service—the unforgettable image of the world’s richest man celebrating the cut-off of aid to the world’s poorest people by prancing on a stage with a chain saw.

Voters who dislike Trump may be enjoying Musk’s colorful attacks on the want-to-be autocrat they don’t think should be president. Those who disapprove of Trump’s spending bill may think kindly of Musk because he described it (not inaccurately) as a “disgusting abomination.” Some Democratic politicians may be tempted to toady up to Musk to get a share of his lavish election spending.

That’s all understandable, but no one should forget the lesson of Elon Musk’s campaign to dismantle federal agencies and the warning it demands: This man is not to be trusted anywhere near our government.