“Move fast and break things” was an early Facebook motto that has become ingrained as a basic mindset in the tech world. Looking at the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE and Donald Trump’s quick tanking of the economy, perhaps it’s one that should be rethought. Musk, whose directive with his made-up federal agency was to cut spending, largely by eliminating federal jobs, seems to be doing a pretty crappy job at both his own federal work and his private sector gigs too. Time for a PIP, maybe?
In private meetings with Republican lawmakers, Musk has reportedly been employing the Shaggy defense when confronted about the firings, rehirings, and generally destructively chaotic shenanigans of DOGE: It wasn’t me.
The Guardian reported Thursday that Musk had been making the Capitol rounds, and had a little pizza chat-n-chew with GOP Rep. Richard Hudson in a basement cafeteria, after which Hudson joined in to sing backup.
“Elon doesn’t fire people,” Hudson told the outlet. “He doesn’t have hiring and firing authority. The president’s empowered him to go uncover this information, that’s it.”
It’s quite the contrast from just two weeks ago, when Musk was onstage at CPAC, wielding that fabulous bedazzled chainsaw, declaring it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy.” It feels appropriate now to note once again that this power tool likely is a non-functioning one: Not only has official administrative responsibility for DOGE officially been laid at the feet of one Amy Gleason, not Musk, but on Thursday Trump himself convened his Cabinet, with Musk in the room, to redraft Musk’s sticker chart. Politico reports that Trump told those top officials that they, not Musk, are in charge of final personnel decisions for their agencies, and that Musk is empowered only as far as investigating and making recommendations. You know, like that nosy acquaintance who just can’t help but tell you what they would do in your situation.
Trump recapped the meeting on his Truth Social platform, calling DOGE “an incredible success,” then carefully clipping on the leash and walking that toward the kennel.
“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote in part. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”
He said that he would continue to hold such meetings every two weeks.
Musk gamely retweeted official statements about the meeting, but also appears to have had his feelings hurt: On Friday, he posted a poll to his own social feed asking, “Do you support DOGE reducing government waste & fraud?” and pinned it to the top of his page. The available responses are “no,” “yes,” and “super yes.” Unspoken: Are you mad at him?
Then there’s that scalpel vs. hatchet framing, an unusual use of metaphor from Trump. It sure seems like a chainsaw falls closer to the hatchet end of things on the spectrum, doesn’t it? That’s not even to mention Musk’s beloved woodchipper. Meanwhile, Musk is retweeting Rep. Brandon Gill on Fox News championing working with DOGE to “take a flamethrower to the federal budget.” How surprising that he also reposted an item about Sen. Rand Paul saying that DOGE’s cuts should be made permanent (it’s not clear whether Trump’s latest dizzying DOGE about-face will result in some of the fired being rehired), and further tweets calling those who oppose his cuts “idiots.” But he’s fine, he feels great. He’s thrilled and totally chill, why do you ask?
To make Musk’s crappy mood worse, his spaceship exploded. Ugh! On Thursday, the SpaceX Starship rocket exploded some eight minutes after its eighth test launch in Florida, grounding flights at several nearby airports.
During the livestreamed webcast, SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot explained in real-time. “We just saw some engines go out. It looks like we are losing altitude control of the ship,” Huot said. Multiple engines failed on the craft, which appeared to then start spinning. Shortly after, the spaceship lost communication with control. “It’s pretty obvious that we’re not going to continue the rest of the mission today,” Huot continued, in his own mission, a few minutes later.
Several airports delayed flights for “space flight debris.” The FAA issued a statement that they would require SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into the incident, promising that the FAA will be “involved in every step” and must approve corrective actions and reports before SpaceX will be allowed to perform another launch.
“During the event, the FAA activated a Debris Response Area and briefly slowed aircraft outside the area where space vehicle debris was falling or stopped aircraft at their departure location,” the statement said in part. “Normal operations have resumed.”
The FAA is overseen, of course, by new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, a multi-season alum of MTV’s The Real World. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s a tough one to spin, but heck if SpaceX didn’t try, characterizing the disaster as “rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost” in a tweet. “We will review the data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. As always, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will offer additional lessons to improve Starship’s reliability.”
On his own feed, in the midst of his DOGEhouse tantrum, Musk also focused on the positive, retweeting others who saw the silver lining.
“That was a beautiful launch and landing,” one such supporter wrote. “Progress is not always linear and I know the SpaceX team will continue to iterate and improve Starship as humanity marches toward Mars.”
Musk has not commented publicly about the mission.
