Reservoir DOGE

As Elon Musk exits the White House, Republicans are scratching their heads over what all the chaos really accomplished, and how DOGE’s slapdash attempts to trim the budget stack up next to the $4 trillion budget-buster they just jammed through the House. As Trump himself reportedly said, “Was it all bullshit?”

Whatever the true size of the cuts, which Musk’s team has repeatedly revised down, they are just a fraction of the $2 trillion that Musk originally promised. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Leigh Ann Caldwell

June 1, 2025

At President Trump’s farewell news conference for departing “special employee” Elon Musk on Friday, the world’s wealthiest man declared that DOGE was only “just beginning.” For his part, Trump called Musk’s actions “sweeping and consequential,” and gifted him a gold key to the White House—symbolic, perhaps, of the promise that he might return. The reality, of course, is that DOGE has been one of the most chaotic, overrated, and ineffective components of Trump’s second term so far—a significant accomplishment in itself. On some level, that’s what the press conference was memorializing.