3 days ago
Elon Musk may come to wonder if DOGE was worth the fights
If it wasn't for his shock-and-awe destruction of government agencies, Elon Musk's DOGE era might have been defined by his many MAGA feuds.
The first big schism, before Trump was even inaugurated, set the standard for some of the personal attacks to come.
"We're going to rip your face off," Trump ally Steve Bannon said in his podcast late last year, an apparent warning to Musk during a dispute over specialist worker visas.
Bannon, who was Trump's chief strategist in his first term, had already declared he'd "made it my personal thing to take this guy down". "Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant," he later said.
Leaks from inside the White House suggest Musk soon made some more powerful enemies.
"F*** you! f*** you! f*** you!" Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly screamed at Musk in the West Wing hallway in April. Tensions exploded after Musk hand-picked a new tax-agency boss without Bessent's knowledge, according to reports citing witnesses.
Musk had already clashed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a cabinet meeting a month earlier, where he criticised both for firing too few workers.
No fan of tariffs, Musk also fought with Trump's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, on his own X platform.
After Navarro mocked Tesla as a car "assembler" rather than "manufacturer", Musk called him "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks". Then, perhaps deciding he hadn't been offensive enough, he followed up by calling him "Peter Retarrdo".
"Boys will be boys," Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said later.
"We will let their public sparring continue," she said, adding it "speaks to the president's willingness to hear from all sides".
The public sparring also spoke to perceptions in Trump's circles that Musk was a chaos agent with too much access and power.
Some of the president's allies were no doubt relieved to see his Wednesday tweet confirming his time in government was coming to an end.
"This is a way to make a lot of enemies and not that many friends," Musk said of his work about a month before his announcement.
Musk has been in frequent fights on every front. He's facing multiple legal battles over DOGE's actions. States like New York are looking at ways to punish his businesses. And he's in regular stoushes online and elsewhere with Democrats and, on occasion, Republicans.
A lot of it could be written off as the rough-and-tumble of American politics, which is more intense and extreme than ever.
But what's especially hurt Musk and his businesses — particularly his electric-vehicle venture — is the public backlash.
Tesla was battered by a stock sell-off campaign and a sharp drop in sales, as well as protests and vandalism at dealerships, before reporting a 71 per cent profit plummet in the first quarter of this year.
(It should be noted some analysts expect Musk's business interests will come out ahead overall, given the benefits his other companies — like SpaceX — could enjoy after his influential White House stint.)
Musk has expressed frustration he couldn't get more done at DOGE. "I think we've been effective — not as effective as I'd like," he told his final cabinet meeting.
But certain MAGA priorities, which have recently come into clearer view, could now prove even more frustrating for him to watch play out from afar.
Musk had frequently talked about the DOGE mission as a nation-saving one.
He argues the US's rising debt puts it at risk of bankruptcy.
That's why he's so unhappy with Trump's spending bill — official name: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," Musk told CBS. "But I don't know if it can be both."
The bill raises the debt ceiling — that is, the legal limit placed on federal government borrowing — by $US4 trillion ($6.2 trillion).
It includes new tax cuts, and extends income tax cuts from Trump's first term, which Democrats and others criticised for disproportionately benefiting the rich.
At the same time, it puts new requirements on access to food stamps and health insurance for low-income Americans, projected to impact millions of people.
It's now before the Senate after passing the House of Representatives by one vote.
Musk told CBS: "I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit — not decrease it — and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing."
In what may have been his final White House press conference on Friday, local time, Musk wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "The Dogefather".
He was also sporting a black eye, which he said was the result of inviting his five-year-old son to punch him in the face.
The shiner, rather than the shirt, might be the symbol that best represents his government stint.
In many ways, it's been bruising. And Musk may come to wonder if it was worth all the fights.
