Elon Musk had done 'no preparation' for DOGE ahead of Trump's win so adopted a 'spaghetti against the wall' approach

[Eugene]

Source: The Independent

Elon Musk had done ‘no preparation’ for DOGE ahead of Trump’s win so adopted a ‘spaghetti against the wall’ approach

SpaceX billionaire reportedly needed civics lessons to be brought up to speed on how US government works

Graig Graziosi
in Washington, DC
Friday 28 February 2025 22:36 GMT

The world's richest man and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, reportedly didn't start preparing to upend the federal bureaucracy until the days after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, according to a new report.

Musk and his team of young computer engineers have been gutting the federal government, recommending the firing of tens of thousands of civil servants — including at least 6,000 US veterans — and shuttering entire agencies since Trump's inauguration earlier this year.

But the plan for DOGE's work didn't begin in earnest until after Trump won, when Musk and a group of MAGA loyalists reportedly began hurriedly throwing together a plan for shaving down the federal workforce, according to a New York Times report. In early November, Musk began staying at a $2,000 a night cottage on Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort property in Florida, where the early plans for DOGE started to form.

At the time, failed Republican presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was still co-leading the group alongside Musk. Sources familiar with the situation told the newspaper that Musk and Ramaswamy's early challenges involved trying to determine a legal structure for accomplishing their goals.

One source described their methodology as throwing "spaghetti against the wall."

-snip-

Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-doge-no-preparation-trump-b2706962.html

Alternate link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-had-done-no-223655990.html

[unblock]

1. cosplay. all cosplay. republicans have this idea of what governing *looks* like, but they have no idea how to do it.

so they just pretend, and claim they're doing it.

real savings cuts are done by identifying programs that can be cut of eliminated or consolidated, letting the plans be known, allowing time for feedback from all parties so the broader implications are known, then implementing the cuts in the next budget.

it's not done by slash and burn and canceling payments on things that were already committed and agreed to, without allowing time to even know what we're losing in the process.

but musk is wearing his superhero efficiency cape and pretending to be a superhero while he in actuality he's at best a bull in a china shop ruining everything.

[dchill]

2. Yeah, he's Jackson Pollock with no talent.

An agent of chaos with no useful intellect. When will someone figure out that what he's doing is illegal?

[underpants]

3. More - Elon rejected someone who knew what they were talking about for Miller and Voight

Smith reportedly had to give Musk a basic budgeting and civics lesson to bring him up to speed on how Congressional appropriations worked.

Smith reportedly warned that DOGE would need an army of lawyers to legally carry out its goals, but Musk reportedly wanted to ignore the legal process and tear down the federal government.



The source said Musk did not care for Smith — preferring instead to surround himself with his own loyalists — and accused him of offering too much "classic consultant stuff."




Musk continued to spend time with Trump-world mainstays; he received lessons on how the executive branch operates from Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller, who is credited as the architect of the administration's draconian anti-immigration policies. The DOGE head later struck up a quick friendship with current OMB boss Russell Vought, who co-authored the near-universally loathed Project 2025