Summary

Elon Musk’s DOGE faces mounting pressure to show achievements amid criticism. Staffers, under pressure from Trump administration officials, seek public relations wins to counter negative headlines.

Cuts to federal offices led to mass layoffs, and efforts to modernize government services have been chaotic. DOGE prioritizes speed over security and protecting sensitive information.

Trump has distanced himself, stating agency chiefs, not Musk, control department cuts, preferring a “scalpel” over a “hatchet” approach. Public opinion has turned against DOGE, with 48% disapproving versus 34% approving, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

With limited time before their tenure ends, DOGE officials are desperate to show results.

  • QuarkVsOdo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    5 days ago

    Like all his others companies.

    • SpaceX has exploding star ships
    • StarLink comes with so many ties, that alternatives are highly sought after
    • Neural link might already be defunct, I don’t know
    • His stake in OpenAI is too complicated to follow
    • Tesla has 3 models you could buy, none of them is FSD yet, one is the Cyberstuck, no truck, no robots.
    • Boring company was just fluff and BS, since a tunnel that’s only 1 lane wide is a safety nightmare and hyperloop is like the simpisons “monorail” Episode

    Maybe at some point in his mid 50ties he should have focused on one thing.

      • Ledericas@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        SpaceX is not some virtue of musk, he also pollutes heavily, and ignore safety standards to launch all those in texas

        • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          5 days ago

          They have 95% success rate for landing boosters in a relatively new technology, saving loads in terms of trash and pollution (if that’s even a metric somebody is remotely interested in for space travel).

          This is a huge leap. Probably not worth giving Musk credit for, but still.

      • Flic@mstdn.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        5 days ago

        @Fredthefishlord @QuarkVsOdo all his companies basically exist to siphon off government funding that should be going to something more worthy. In the case of SpaceX, look what’s happening to NASA now. And with the Hyperloop, he openly said he promoted that to take attention and money to prevent the development of high speed rail

      • QuarkVsOdo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        5 days ago

        Yes and no. The engines and upright landing is very good… designing&Testing unbound by yearly grant applications but with “fuck you money” really propelled the industry forward.

        But they cut so many corners.

      • Darkmoon_UK@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        5 days ago

        Agreed, I despise Musk as much as any sane person does now, but I just can’t get on board with this prevalent behaviour of indiscriminately trashing everything about a person who you don’t like.

        Just be honest! He clearly has played a big part in achieving some spectacular results: Whether you think that was in engineering, or by cunning manipulation all the way up; the fact is SpaceX have achieved feats nobody else has, and I don’t believe it would have happened without Musk.

        None of that changes the fact he is a cunt, but dishonesty in criticism only weakens it.

        • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          I like this place. If this was in reddit, you giving even a little bit of credit to the man would leave you with -200 and probably banned.

          It’s almost like the world is nuanced and not just red vs blue…

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        4 days ago

        So much of the criticism focuses on Starship, specifically. Starship has never claimed to be anything other than a test program. Look back into the history of NASA test programs and you’ll fine lots of exploded pieces of rockets. Starship is also moving along a whole lot better than the SLS at a comparable stage of the development track. People bleating about this clearly don’t have a lot of knowledge about rockets and their history.

        Safety is somewhat valid. Obviously, exploding rockets over the Gulf of Mexico is not a good thing, but the chances of debris actually hitting a plane are minuscule. See Big Sky Theory, which is the basis for a lot of air traffic policy. It’s just that the aviation industry has extremely tight safety standards, and so they divert planes.

        Falcon 9 also exists, and now has a better track record than Soyuz (the previous gold standard). People making these arguments seem to conveniently leave that out.

        Now, environmental standards, how Musk is trying to gut NASA and the FAA, and how the company never would have survived without government subsidies? Yes, absolutely focus on those. Also, the fact that SpaceX employees are mostly insulated from their idiot CEO. They’re the real heroes of the company.

        In a different Administration, I think SpaceX should be nationalized and run something like the USPS or Amtrak. NASA shouldn’t make their own rockets anymore. They’re really bad at making anything close to cost effective.

    • Comtief@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      5 days ago

      Maybe at some point in his mid 50ties he should have focused on one thing.

      He seems to be focused on twitter posting.

  • Seleni@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    edit-2
    5 days ago

    48% disapproving.

    He’s destroying our entire government and 52% of Americans think ‘yeah, this is fine’ or ‘yeah, who cares?’

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      5 days ago

      They don’t understand what the people being fired do. There’s no marketing or awareness campaigns for the GSA clerks that keep every government office in the country stocked with chairs; or the mental health nurses that pick up the phone at 2 in the morning.

      People think it’s some white guy just golfing while they collect checks.

    • Max@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      6 days ago

      imagine this sentence 10 years ago!

      rip Kabosu, your alias was not meant to be stained in such a way :(

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 days ago

      Or maybe just move to a farm upstate where they can run and play through the fields all day. No one to say “bad doge”, no one to stop from digging homes or chasing squirrels, no one to care when they play on the mud

  • redlemace@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    59
    ·
    6 days ago

    I’d say it’s predictable … Had it been a success I think Trump would be shouting “One of my master moves, this is the mother of all my moves” Now we get to read “Trump has distanced himself” meaning it’s failing and Musk is gonna be sacrificed without a thought “I don’t know what Musk did, he acted like a loose cannon but I fired him for his incompetence”

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      6 days ago

      The people Trump fired this way in the past didn’t pay for his campaign.

      Trump works for Musk, not the other way around.

      • MrVilliam@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        30
        ·
        6 days ago

        True, but what does musk have left to give to trump? If he’s no longer useful, trump will have no problem dumping him and moving on. As soon as he thinks it’s more beneficial to turn on musk than it is to suck his dick, he will. Loyalty is one way for him.

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          6 days ago

          I think its a game of “who owns the zeitgeist?” Its why “Rumble” exists; why fascists sought their own media ecosystems; its why Elon bought twitter.

          There is some threshold where another billion buys you no more power, or at least, significantly less than your last billion. Hence buying a the worlds largest microphone, twitter, for what seemed like an overpriced market value.

          So if Elon controls Trumps access; or even more threateningly, if Elon captures the zeitgeist, and Trump is no longer in control of narratives, or Elon is able to create and inject his own, thats a real material threat.

          Trump is going to die soon; whoever inherits this cult is the real threat.

          • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            6 days ago

            Do cults inherit well?

            The leadership of the DPRK transitioned across generations, but there was plenty of institutional alignment and wheel greasing.

            Trump will be trying to negotiate with the reaper for six months after he’s dead. I can’t imagine he considers his mortality, let alone in the context of anything that has to survive after his departure. There will be a free for all to grab his mantle.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          6 days ago

          Elon has said he will spend the money to drive out any Republican that votes against Trump. Elon controls Congress.

          • Ledericas@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            5 days ago

            I read that somewhere, both Elon and Trump are in a codependent relationship financially and socially.

        • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          6 days ago

          I’m pretty sure musk is still the richest man in the world (at least on paper, who knows what people like Putin have hidden away). Until that changes there is a .00001% chance of trump and musk’s relationship deteriorating

      • gothic_lemons@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 days ago

        If you think Trump cares if people did things for him, even Musk, maybe you should talk to one of the dozens of contractors Trump has stiffed over the years.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    5 days ago

    In the end, DOGE financial waste will be bigger than any “savings” they produced, but the real costs of their action will be much, much bigger in the end.

    Just think of the people who will get killed by hurricanes without a warning because they dismantle NOAA.

        • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          More trans people should come out as loan repayment lovers. It would be such a shame to just erase those loans away. And migrant families love paying the loans. Imagine if they had no loans to repay! What would their purpose in life be then with so much money just hanging around all the time.

    • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      That’s how we know it was never about auditing or waste.

      We have generals from the military asking for less equipment , and then congress ignores them and rubber stamps the contracts of their doners in the Military Industrial Complex.

      https://apnews.com/united-states-government-united-states-congress-4416606e329b4c8baa755aad333d73db

      If we want to go after real waste in our spending we need to start forcing the rich to make concessions. This becomes more true every year we allow wealth inequality to continue growing.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      5 days ago

      This is a common misconception. The military isn’t designed to be efficient on the back end. It’s designed to win wars efficiently, which is an entirely different thing. The last time they tried to be “efficient” with the military the 101st ended up doing the world’s fastest ground and air assault on rations because they didn’t have enough food and water. And entire battalions got extremely sick from using local water when they absolutely had to.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          It also happens to be the last time we actually fought on a full scale level. We haven’t done anything like 2003 since.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          5 days ago

          George W Bush in 2003. And no, it wasn’t just that he was a moron. There were very smart logistics officers working on the problem. It’s an inherent problem. The military normally would much rather over supply an area and write it off after the fighting. Because that means there’s always a pallet of whatever you need and a plane or helicopter to transport it. Trying to meet the exact needs means that when something gets blown up, it’s replacement isn’t even in the right region of the planet.

          So to be efficient at blowing shit up you have to accept inefficiency in the back end.

  • Blackout@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    6 days ago

    There’s still time to die a hero Elon. All you have to do is commit hari-kari and I will build you a statue.

  • sloppychops@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    6 days ago

    The fall-out between Trump and Musk is going to be explosive! And it will come. Sooner than we think, I’d guess.

    If Canadian and European movie theatres want to boost attendance, they might want to think about screening the whole thing.

    When Trump inevitably threatens to have him deported, it’s going to be the comedy event of the year. Oscar worthy.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    6 days ago

    Defunding the nation, and undermining its function, is the win they wanted, and they’re getting it.

    People forget the point is to hand things over to corporate America. Hence this article is out of touch, and based on the author’s feelings about Musk’s feeling…

    …whilst completely being ignorant of the plan. The plan is corporate run libertarian fifedoms. Corporate mini-states.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      6 days ago

      The plan is corporate run libertarian fifedoms. Corporate mini-states.

      Or as we used to call them back when we were still a geopolitical enemy of Russia, “oligarchs.”

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    5 days ago

    What’s all the BS they’ve been doing all this time? Is it not winning to crash about like a bull in a china shop wrecking things? What sort of “win” are they looking for? Are they looking for a Death Star shot where the entire country says, “as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

    • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      5 days ago

      These idiots are so drunk on their own Kool aid that everyone in government is useless and corrupt and not actually working and that it’s all a “waste.”

      Also that zillions of people are on government support that should not be, nevermind that its people, exactly like Musk, who have run their shitty corpos in such a way that people can’t afford to exist anymore without government assistance.

      I mean, technically he is right, there are a ton of people who should not be on government programs, that are, because profit profit profit companies have made life miserable and those people don’t have a choice.

  • 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    6 days ago

    The funny thing is that Elon Musk is the wealthiest man ever and enough hecklers chanting “no one likes Elon” in a sing song manner would bring him to tears