Sith Happens: The Billionaire Breakup

What the Trump–Musk divorce is distracting us from: the quiet survival of a failing government agency

In this week’s episode of Darth Vader’s Apprentice Has Left the Chat, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have gone full Sith-on-Sith. Musk is out here calling Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” a “disgusting abomination,” Trump’s allies are leaking rumors about Musk's alleged ketamine binges, and somewhere in the West Wing, there was reportedly a full-blown shoving match involving Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a sunglasses-wearing, black-eyed Musk.

It’s the kind of high-octane, over-the-top drama political media lives for: tech billionaire turns on the MAGA movement, Twitter lights up with memes, and cable news anchors pretend this is somehow a meaningful policy moment.

And just in case there were any bridges left unburned, Musk recently told voters to fire all politicians, a bipartisan middle finger that makes it clear he’s not just done with Trump; he’s done with Washington.

But here’s the thing no one’s talking about, and we promise it’s juicier than any Force-choke cosplay: the thing Musk was supposedly running, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), still exists. And it’s growing.

That’s right. Even though Musk walked out, torched the place on the way, and publicly disavowed Trump’s biggest fiscal policy, DOGE — a flaming bag of bureaucratic performance art — wasn’t scrapped. Trump didn’t kill it. He didn’t even distance himself. Instead, he grabbed the reins himself and asked Congress for more money.

So let’s talk about the real scandal: not the breakup, but the marriage that somehow continues.

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The Distraction from the Disaster

The Trump–Musk split is dominating headlines, but what’s barely registering outside a few policy wonk circles is this: DOGE is not only still running, it’s expanding.

This is the same DOGE that Musk was supposed to helm like a libertarian Tony Stark. The same DOGE that promised to slash $2 trillion in waste with a team of unpaid tech geniuses. The same DOGE that, instead, produced disputed savings numbers, ballooning internal costs, lawsuits, and a federal workforce in chaos.

You’d think, with Musk now in open revolt, trashing Trump’s agenda, publicly calling for a total political reset, and suggesting every elected official be thrown out, Trump would quietly mothball the experiment and move on. He had a perfect political gift: a high-profile scapegoat who had already set the place on fire. Trump could’ve blamed Musk for the dysfunction, claimed the idea was sound but the execution flawed, and moved on unscathed.

But instead, Trump has done something that makes zero political or strategic sense: he’s taking full ownership of the DOGE disaster. The agency is no longer Musk’s toy; it’s Trump’s baby. And he wants Congress to nearly double its funding and boost its staffing.

It’s the political equivalent of being handed an out and choosing to walk back into the burning building.

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The Glorious Mess That Is DOGE

If you haven’t been following DOGE closely, here’s the quick download: it was supposed to be a Silicon Valley dream team hacking away at government waste. Instead, it turned into a case study in how not to run a reform initiative.

We at the Coffman Chronicle have waded deep into the DOGE doonboggle. See some of our reporting here:

Disorder, Optics, Grievance, Executive Orders: Inside the Collapse of Trump’s Chaos Government

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DOGE: The $40 Million Government Improv Show

DOGE: Project 2025’s Trojan Horse

Let’s start with the receipts — literally. DOGE’s much-hyped “Wall of Receipts” was supposed to showcase real-time savings from canceled contracts and closed offices. In reality? It included deals that were never finalized, contracts that had already expired, and one particularly creative entry that overstated savings by $7.99 billion. (They canceled an $8 million contract, but counted it as $8 billion in savings. Honest mistake, right?)

Then there’s the math no one wants to talk about (except Steve Bannon, who surprisingly noticed that this math don’t math). While DOGE claims to have saved around $160 billion, independent analysis suggests it may have cost taxpayers over $135 billion due to paid leave, disrupted services, rehiring expenses, and lost productivity. That number doesn’t even include the growing legal costs from lawsuits filed by displaced federal workers and contractors.

See our reporting on Bannon’s… thoughts.

Bannon Turns on Elon: “He Promised a Trillion and Gave Us a Headache”

Also worth noting: those “volunteer” staffers? It turns out that many are drawing six-figure taxpayer-funded salaries, some maxing out the federal pay scale. So much for the hacker-ethos revolution Musk promised.

Even some of the most high-profile office closures listed by DOGE have since been quietly reversed, including mine safety offices and over 70 USDA facilities. In other words, the cuts that made headlines were rolled back, but the headlines remained.

So, what is DOGE at this point? Not a cost-cutter. Not a reform engine. It’s a very expensive, very loud marketing campaign with diminishing returns and rising liabilities.

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The Strategic Blunder Nobody Understands

Here’s what makes the whole situation so bizarre. Trump had the perfect opportunity to bail. Musk walked. The media turned on the project. The receipts were crumbling. Even the public, including a chunk of the conservative base, was unimpressed. Polls showed DOGE underwater with voters from both parties. The legal bills were mounting. The headlines were shifting from “bold disruption” to “bureaucratic disaster.”

All Trump had to do was say, “It was a great idea, but Musk fumbled it.” Boom. Done. Musk takes the heat, the experiment ends, and Trump walks away looking decisive and mature (well, relatively speaking).

Instead, he did what he does best: double down on the least winnable version of reality. He wrapped his arms around the agency, took credit for it, and asked Congress for more money. He’s now not just the president who allowed DOGE to flail; he’s the president who adopted it after its architect quit in disgrace.

This means that every future lawsuit, every failed savings projection, every exposed exaggeration, and every reversed office closure is now on him. No buffer. No scapegoat. No plausible deniability.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate just how off-script this is for Trump. Depending on which version of TACO you subscribe to —

• “Throw Anyone Completely Overboard” (the political strategy where Trump dumps allies the moment they become liabilities), or

• “Trump Always Chickens Out” (Wall Street’s theory that he talks big but bails when things get risky)

This was his moment to do either. Blame Musk and move on, or quietly kill DOGE and pretend it never happened.

Instead, he did neither. He stayed. He took ownership. He asked for more money. He tied his name to a flaming bureaucratic wreckage and dared critics to care.

It’s not just bad strategy. It’s the political equivalent of grabbing the Titanic’s wheel and shouting, “I’ll steer from here!”

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The Doge That Lived

So here we are. Musk has rage-quit the White House. He’s dragging Trump on social media. The receipts are fake, the offices are un-closing, the lawsuits are stacking up, and the volunteer staffers are quietly pocketing government paychecks large enough to sponsor their own SpaceX launches.

And yet, DOGE lives, not because it works, not because it’s popular, and not even because it aligns with any coherent strategy. It lives because Donald Trump, for reasons we may never fully understand (ego? spite? an allergy to exit ramps?), decided that taking ownership of a failed government reform experiment was the winning move.

It’s possible this ends like many other Trump ventures: loud launch, shaky execution, costly fallout, and a final season twist where someone else takes the blame. But this time, there’s no fall guy left. The Elon-sized hole at the center of DOGE is wide open, and Trump just climbed into it himself.

So while the media obsesses over the Trump–Musk Sith war, remember this: the real political story isn’t the breakup.

It’s the bad idea that stayed.

Bibliography:

• Calfas, Jennifer. “Elon Musk Quits Government Efficiency Role, Calls for Ouster of All Politicians.” Time, May 30, 2025.

• “DOGE Cuts Cost $135 Billion, Analysis Finds.” CBS News, May 27, 2025.

• Eilperin, Juliet, and Jeff Stein. “Trump, Musk Try to Smooth Over Threatened Rift.” Washington Post, May 30, 2025.

• Gershgorn, Dave. “DOGE Wall of Receipts Overstates Savings.” NPR, February 19, 2025.

• Grind, Kirsten. “Elon Musk’s Black Eye, Shouting Match Raise Concerns in Trump White House.” Vanity Fair, May 29, 2025.

• Kang, Cecilia. “Trump Admin Reverses USDA, MSHA Closures.” E&E News, May 30, 2025.

• Luscombe, Richard. “Elon Musk Says Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Is a Disgusting Abomination.” The Guardian, June 3, 2025.

• Meckler, Laura. “USDA Offices Disappear from DOGE Closure List.” Agriculture.com, June 1, 2025.

• “Public Opinion on DOGE.” New America, January 2025.

• “Trump Budget Would Expand DOGE.” Politico, June 3, 2025.

• “Inside DOGE’s Budget Games.” ProPublica, May 28, 2025.

• Shear, Michael D. “Musk vs. Bessent Erupted in Shouting Match.” Axios, April 23, 2025.

• “Musk’s DOGE Savings Claims Don’t Hold Up.” The Atlantic, May 26, 2025.

• Guskin, Emily, and Scott Clement. “Public Sours on Musk’s Role, Is Skeptical That Government Is Cutting Waste.” Washington Post, April 28, 2025.