Elon Musk leaves Donald Trump's Doge - seven times his leadership really wasn't efficient

Elon Musk’s time in US president Donald Trump’s administration, as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (or Doge, for short), came to an end on Friday (May 30), and journalists and critics alike are assessing just how efficient the billionaire was as a senior government adviser.

Trump gave his own overview of Musk’s time in the role during a press conference in the Oval Office, where he said the billionaire had done a “fantastic job” and that “Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude”.

He also said: “Elon has worked tirelessly helping to lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations.”

But what exactly did happen during Musk’s time in government? Allow us to refresh your memory…

Accidentally cutting Ebola prevention

Not long after Musk began his cost-cutting frenzy, he ended up revealing his team “accidentally” axed a program designed to prevent the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.

Speaking during a cabinet meeting in February, Musk admitted: “We will make mistakes, we won’t be perfect, but when we make mistakes we will fix it very quickly.

“For example, with USAID one of the things we accidentally cancelled, very briefly, was Ebola prevention.

“I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”

Sounds like a pretty big mistake to us, Elon.

That email to federal employees which government departments instructed people to ignore…

On February 22, Musk announced that, per Trump’s instructions, “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week”.

He added: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Except, FBI director Kash Patel instructed employees to “pause any responses” because the bureau “is in charge of all our review processes”, and a senior official in the State Department said it “will respond on behalf of the department”, adding that “no employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their department chain of command”.

Awkward.

Which everybody could email Doge about...

Rather than ask employees to send the email to a special address which is harder to guess, social media sleuths eventually worked it out and trolled accordingly.

Which Musk asked to Twitter/X users to decide whether it was a good idea or not...

Rather than exercise his own skillset in decision-making, Musk decided to make the “authoritarian” move of asking users on his Twitter/X platform to decide whether “all federal employees [should] be required to send a short email with some basic bullet points about what they accomplished last week”.

The poll ended with just over 70 per cent of voters saying ‘yes’, with the rest voting ‘no’.

And ended up being so successful that he had to give employees a ‘second chance’ to respond

In a sign that the whole farce was definitely going swimmingly, Musk took to Twitter/X on February 24 to declare: “Subject to the discretion of the President, [employees] will be given another chance.

“Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

One social media user quipped in response: “So in other words, the first email flopped.”

The Doge takeover of the Institute of Peace which, according to court documents, resulted in an infestation of roaches and rats

Doge took over the building in Washington D.C. in March, and according to an affidavit filed in the state’s federal court by the institute’s president and CEO George Moose on May 23, “vermin were not a problem prior to March 17”.

“On May 22, members of my staff, including our chief of security and our contract building engineer, spent the day surveying and documenting the condition of the building.

“They reported evidence of rats and roaches in the building,” he wrote.

Doge “doing the opposite” and creating waste

And to top it all off, the Partnership for Public Service – a non-partisan non-profit – estimated earlier this year that Doge cuts would end up costing taxpayers $135 billion, with its president telling CBS MoneyWatch: “We haven’t seen much focus on the waste [DOGE] is creating. This is an effort that was created to address waste but we were seeing the opposite.”

And despite having an original goal of cutting $1 trillion in government spending, Musk admitted in April that it may only end up cutting $150 billion.

Job well done, Elon…

Why not read…

• Elon Musk makes big Mars announcement following Doge departure
• Trump doubles down on ridiculous 'transgender mice' claim

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