WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO . . . ?

DECEMBER 20, 2025 – Remember “DOGE”? Early on in his chaotic current term, Trump introduced the “Department of Government Efficiency” as an autocratic, take-no-prisoners assault on government “fraud, waste, and abuse.” The crowning image of its destructive mandate was its 500-power billionaire director, Elon Musk, on stage at a CPAC conference, wielding a gargantuan mock-up of a chainsaw. In retrospect, DOGE was a gigantic exploding Twinkie: it did tremendous damage but delivered zero nutritional value.

Now, 11 months later, ask yourself . . . When did you last hear anything about DOGE? More to the point . . . What do you know about the damage it wreaked on our country—and for what benefit? Oh, and by the way, what’s become of Elon Musk?

Your answers—and mine, before I undertook a measure of research—to the foregoing questions underscore two additional points about our current circumstances: FIRST, we have short attention spans; and SECOND, one central reason we have short attention spans (politically, at least), is that when we face a constant barrage of late breaking news created by the Washington Clown Shows[1], individually and collectively we lack the investigative, informational, and mnemonic “bandwidth” to track, catalog and curate it all. Moreover, for many millions of Americans, the daily challenge of keeping nostrils above the waterline doesn’t allow for time to study, analyze and tackle society’s most ponderous issues, from housing to education to child care to elder care to health care to putting food on the table to keeping the heat and lights on, the car running and gas in the tank.

The short answers to the questions I posed are as follows:

“What happened to DOGE?” It quietly dissolved, disappeared, went “Poof!” in the night—according to former investment banker Scott Kupor, now serving as Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management. Well, to be precise, those weren’t his exact words. In early November when a Reuters reporter asked Kupor about the status of DOGE, the Director answered tersely, “That doesn’t exist,” and offered no further commentary.

“What damage did DOGE wreak and for what benefits?

(a) Damage. In straight-up empirical terms—lives and dollars—it’s too early to estimate the total, long-term damage wrought by Musk’s chainsaw. For example, how will we know how many millions of lives are now at risk because of cuts to USAID? How will we ever measure the effect of blind cut-off of funds that sustained cancer research in the United States? Ditto all the other knee-jerk cuts to government grants and the personnel that supported government initiatives, from climate research to disaster recovery? None of which considers the cost of over-night shake-ups and chaos in state, local, and private non-profit operations that depended on federal funds and administrative functions.

Even in the face of the presumed validity of a baseline premise—that the “system” could be rendered more efficient (as every “system,” large or small; governmental or non-governmental can be)—a chainsaw approach is inherently inefficient, particularly in large organizations[2]. The assumption of “waste,” which is largely contextual, was never defined or examined. The assumption of “fraud,” at least as gauged by materiality, was never established; for public consumption, however, more invocation of the term “fraud” coupled with the promise to expose it, guaranteed MAGA rally applause. The irony, of course, is that the biggest fraud in American political history, is Trump himself, leading with his persistent baseless claim that the 2024 presidential election (but not concurrent elections for House and Senate seats and state and local offices) was somehow “stolen.”

(b) Benefits. One would think that if DOGE had accomplished all that had been promised—or even a few billion dollars in savings—it would’ve been highly touted by the Commander in Chief of Flim-Flam, especially considering that DOGE folded a full eight months before the pre-ordained end of its term.

If you dig with an army surplus spade—no heavy equipment needed—you discover that the multi-billion-dollar savings promised from Musk’s chainsaw blitz is a fiction. You also learn, however, about his conflicts of interest and that many of his minions wound up with cushy jobs within the Trump Administration.

It’s fair to conclude that on balance, DOGE itself turned into its own version of “government waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“What happened to Elon Musk?” He had a falling out with Trump and took a hike—albeit with his “HUGE” government contracts in place (no “waste, fraud or abuse” there!) and with having helped himself to who knows what personal data of millions of Americans to be used, sold, otherwise mishandled. Oh yes, and as chief ambassador of the TechBro oligarchs, during his DOGE days, he’s seen his net worth increase from an estimated $500 billion to over $600 billion.[3]

These questions—and answers—raise a more troubling question: how do we reverse the damage caused by the DOGE chainsaw? How will we restore confidence in the countless government agencies that provide(d) services to . . . rich, poor, young, old, urban, suburban and rural Americans; to taxpayers, Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid recipients, SBA loan recipients, disaster victims, medical science researchers, students, farmers, miners, national park visitors, motorists, air travelers . . . to name some of us who’ve grown to rely on government spending? If all government funding warrants re-examination and reform, how do we reexamine and reform what now lies shattered across the land from coast to coast? If your house gets carried away by flood waters, a loved one gets carried away by some dread disease, your crops suffer in flood or drought, your city can’t hire more cops or your town can’t buy a new fire engine, how do you measure the damage caused by a blindfolded chainsaw-wielding über-billionaire who never stood for election and whose appointment by an irresponsible executive wasn’t confirmed or even questioned by the U.S. Senate?

In retrospect, the entire DOGE act was a large project in flim-flam, an exercise in abject impulsive sociopathy unleashed by a narcissistic megalomaniacal bully with little understanding of how the world works and who is no more qualified to be president of the United States than my two-year-old grandson is to lead the International Atomic Energy Agency. The chainsaw outrage will cost us dearly in ways and amounts for which Trump, Musk and their minions will never be held to account. Why? Because the irreparable damage they caused has been eclipsed by so many other assaults on the foundations of our republic. Just think: warrantless ICE raids; illegal attacks on alleged drug-runner boats; Republican failure to address the post 1/1/26 surge in ACA premium subsidies; tariff terrorism; tax cuts for the über-rich; grift and corruption in the Trump Administration; retributive persecution against Trump’s political enemies; disdain for the rule of law and cynical abuse of legal process; treating Putin as if he were America’s friend and ally; climate change denialism; and treating “affordability” as a “Democratic hoax.” Have I forgotten anything? Oh yeah . . . the Epstein Files.

Trump’s low approval ratings (31% to 46% in the latest polling among nine established media outlets) are still scandalously high. If respondents had taken DDD (Damage Done by DOGE) into effect, at best those ratings should have been 3.2% to 4.6%, which no doubt is what they’d have been in any prior era. But we live in an American political age like none other, the Age of Flim-Flam to the Extreme.

This Christmas, I’m hoping that Santa delivers on two wishes: 1. That the Kool-Aid runs out before the country runs aground; and 2. That once the Kool-Aid does run out, once the overwhelming percentage of voters quit imbibing in nonsense trafficked by the regime, we will have the wherewithal to repair and recover some of what we’ve lost—starting with consensus about what makes a viable nation: the common good.

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Embodied in (a) executive orders and edicts circumventing Congressional authority; (b) the inaction of a Republican-controlled Congress against the unbridled assertion of executive power; (c) the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket.” As to “(c),” note that since Trump has taken office, 90% of lower court decisions in litigation involving the Trump Administration have gone against the regime, whereas 90% of the decisions of the Supreme Court have turned in Trump’s favor. Plus, don’t forget his ultimate “get out of jail free” card—the decision in United States v. Trump, granting him immunity from criminal prosecution.

[2] Having been involved in budgeting and expense cutting inside a public company, I’m familiar with how “cost-cutting” works. Invariably, such measures are aimed at improving very short-term P&L statements; rarely do expense slashing edicts involve analysis of long-term cost effects of the cuts. Most corporate financial accounting and reporting is by fiscal quarter and year, though full net cost savings analyses require a much longer horizon.

[3]At a burn rate of $1 million PER DAY, it would take Elon Musk 1,369 YEARS to spend his fortune of $500 billion; an even more staggering 1,642 years to exhaust a fortune of $600 billion. At the same run-rate, it would take a garden variety billionaire just under 2.7 years to qualify for SNAP benefits.