Mother Jones illustration; Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Elon Musk’s announcement on Wednesday that his “scheduled time” working for President Donald Trump is ending was instantly met with a mix of celebration and schadenfreude. And for once, the delight is likely to include both critics of the president and Trump-world.
This is not surprising. Musk’s personality, by all accounts deeply unlikeable, had been pissing off Trump aides from the very start; reports of infighting and West Wing screaming matches have been commonplace; Musk’s recent public criticism of Trump’s big, beautiful bill seemed to solidify his inevitable departure.
But as much as there is to relish about the world’s richest man getting unceremoniously offboarded by the very government he spent a quarter of a billion dollars to install, the joy quickly fades upon examining the damage. A quick accounting: As the head of DOGE, Musk lead the dismantling of the federal government with outlandish threats and actions; wreaked havoc at USAID; disrupted critical HIV programs around the world; stayed up late to harass federal employees with insulting emails; spread vicious conspiracy theories about US agencies that work to administer foreign aid; fired entire departments that work to prevent bird flu and safeguard our nuclear arsenal; paralyzed national parks.
To put it simply, Elon Musk’s brief time in Washington made American life worse, with actions that will continue to reveal the true extent of their immense damage for years to come. But for me, the thing that I’ll remember the most is Musk’s cruel disdain for the federal worker. Countless lives have been unraveled because of this man; their mental health in tatters as they still struggle to find employment after being callously fired by DOGE’s rabid desires to gut the federal government. I think about this Washington Post story often. May Musk’s legacy always be centered in the trauma that he and others so gleefully imparted.
