The Day of the DOGE

(Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post)

      The DOGEfather is gone. Last Thursday, he yipped and yapped at Trump's ankles for a few hours and wound up losing $34 billion of his fortune. It's probably the most spectacular fall in the history of American big business. Musk did that to himself because except for threatening his $38 billion in government contracts, Trump hardly had to say anything about Elon. Now all he has to show for his brief time in government is a cheap gold-plated key to Washington and Stephen Miller's wife.

     Elon Musk's fall from what passed for grace in the Beltway since January 20th serves as an object lesson in what happens in that Beltway when you run afoul of the Executive branch, especially if it's run by a vindictive psychopath like Trump. On paper, yes, Elon Musk is the world's richest person  Yes, he still has vast resources, liquid capital and a security detail that presidents and prime ministers envy.

     But if anything, this inevitable breakup of the bromance of the century proved that even Elon Musk had feet of clay, an Achilles heel. And his kryptonite was Donald Trump and his business interests. No doubt, Elon heard in real time that his barking at Trump cost him more money in mere hours than most nations spend annually on national defense. That was the only thing that made him shut up and back off on his threats.

     So, now that sugar daddy is no longer around to give them cover, what of the juvenile delinquents  that Musk brought in with him from SpaceX and Tesla?

     The Washington Post just published a piece about just that. Apparently, since Elon's 130 day contract as "a special government employee" came to an ignominious end two Fridays ago, his DOGE boys are without cover and are starting to get pushed out. At the FAA for instance,

     "At the Federal Aviation Administration, for example, the DOGE team suffered a setback this week when leadership nixed their access to FAA buildings, a command center in Warrenton, Virginia, and the Air Traffic Academy in Oklahoma City, according to an employee briefed on the matter and records obtained by The Washington Post. Four DOGE staffers were also stripped of their credentials and user accounts inside the FAA’s internal computer systems, the records show.

     As of June 2, the staffers — Brady Glantz, Samuel Smeal, Tom Kiernan and Theodore Malaska, all of whom are employees of Musk’s SpaceX — no longer bear the title of “senior adviser to the administrator” on their online profiles within the agency, per the records. In fact, their profiles no longer show any job title at all — nor an affiliated organization, manager, email or phone number, the records show. (A) group of staffers went out for post-work drinks to toast the banishment of DOGE staff."

     Then there was this at Interior:

     "One Interior employee said he and colleagues worked extra-hard, reveling in their government jobs as DOGE seemed to be on the way out. Then he went home and ate some ice cream."

     There's a strange patchwork of authority that wasn't in existence before Musk shoehorned Trump back in the White House. Before, for the first three months, DOGE's, and Musk's, influence was such that when they literally barged their way into federal offices and buildings, they did so with the blessings and assistance of law enforcement, including the US Marshal's Service, the FBI and even the DC Metro Police. Everybody was playing this fairy tale game that Trump's bullshit Executive Order creating DOGE was as good as the Act of Congress that would have been required to make DOGE legitimate. Now they're getting pushed out like so many splinters in fingers.

     And unfairly fired government employees are getting hired back. 

     Sure, there are the usual right wing fluffers like Russel Vought and James Fishback who are insisting that DOGE's best days are still ahead of them. And. yes, there are still some DOGE holdovers that are embedded in the government deeper than Alabama ticks like Sam Corcos and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.

     But their time, too, will come. What we're seeing with DOGE right now is something that many of us had foreseen even before this rolling dumpster fire of an administration took over. The center could not hold, even if a low level rodeo clown like Harrison Fields says, "DOGE is in the DNA of the federal government, and the president is committed to seeing this mission through. No one is under the impression that DOGE is somehow going to disappear.”

     Spoken by a true hack who's illiterate in tea leaves.