Colorful billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk sparked quite a reaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington last week when he leaped around the stage waving a chainsaw.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. CHAINSAAAW!” he exclaimed. "Uwaaauwaargh!"
That’s Elon. Always ready to light up an adoring crowd.
As the CPAC audience settled down, Newsmax talking head Rob Schmitt asked Musk what it feels like to "absolutely shred … the government — the swamp — whatever you want to call it."
It’s cool, Musk said (according to a transcript published by The Verge). It’s awesome. "We’re … trying to get good things done, but also, like, you know, have a good time doing it and, uh, you know, and have, like, a sense of humor."
The "good things" Musk and his minions at DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, are doing consist of cutting government payrolls, canceling contracts and apparently aiming to "delete" (Musk’s word) whole federal agencies.
The most visible fruits of their efforts have been large reductions in force, or RIF in government-speak: layoffs, furloughs and terminations of thousands of Americans who work in the public sector.
What’s less apparent so far is the effect these RIFs will have on potentially millions of Americans who count on services from the targeted government offices and agencies. For example, the Internal Revenue Service began laying off some 7,000 employees Thursday, according to the AP. While tax cheats across the nation will no doubt take comfort, tax filers who need customer service in the upcoming tax season are possibly in for some major frustration.
DOGE’s purported goal is to rid the government of waste, fraud and abuse. And who wouldn’t want to do that? It’s been a standard political mantra of both parties for a long time. The worry is that it’s a cover for other ulterior motives.
The problem I have with the Trump administration’s RIFs is the manner in which they have been carried out, which is too fast, too indiscriminate and utterly lacking accountability or oversight, not to mention the question of legal authority.
DOGE is acting so fast and sowing so much chaos that it’s difficult to grasp the nature and scope of its operations. It’s also difficult to find out who besides Musk is calling the shots.
Musk and Trump claim to have found thousands of cases of rampant waste and fraud, yet DOGE has been suspiciously light on details about its accomplishments or effectiveness.
DOGE has claimed to have cut $55 billion in government spending already, but an analysis by Yahoo Finance finds the figure is closer to $8.5 billion.
And some of the claims Trump and Musk have made about DOGE’s work don’t hold up to scrutiny. They claimed repeatedly last week that DOGE found Social Security beneficiaries who were hundreds of years old. The claim is based on a misunderstanding, perhaps willful, of how COBOL, the programming language used by the Social Security Administration, deals with files lacking birth dates. SSA’s new acting commissioner explained Wednesday that dead centenarians were "not necessarily receiving benefits," according to AP.
Yes, I still cite the AP, which remains one of the most reliable news organizations on the planet, even though Trump bars the agency from presidential events for refusing to use “Gulf of America,” his new made-up name for the Gulf of Mexico. So much for freedom of the press.
Another embarrassing development boiled up last week when DOGE actions resulted in more than 300 staffers fired at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as part of Department of Energy layoffs.
Apparently somebody later realized that retaining those hundreds of experts, with the required security clearances, would be more than a little useful — critical, actually — to managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile, CNN reported.
Fortunately, some members of Congress petitioned Energy Secretary Chris Wright to rehire the workers, and most were reinstated once they could be found, despite having had their telephones cut off.
It’s almost as if haste makes waste.
Anyhow, the chaos sown by DOGE has done little if any damage to the president’s approval ratings so far. According to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll last week, 45 percent of Americans say they support what the president has done during his first month in office, while 53 percent say they disapprove.
On the question of whether the president has exceeded his authority since taking office, 57 percent said he had. Yet Trump has so conditioned us to be shocked, or at least surprised, by his excesses (pardoning all of the Jan. 6 offenders, including those who confessed to beating police, is a prize-winning excess in my view) that it may take more than the usual affronts to turn the electorate against him.
Still, only 35% of respondents in the Washington Post-Ipsos poll deemed Trump "honest and trustworthy." And they’re even less sure about Musk. Only one in four (26%) approve of him shutting down government programs.
At this point, Musk and Trump are rolling out a fast and furious agenda, and most Americans can only look on in awe.
Good luck with that, Mr. President, but be careful. At some point the dust will settle, and American voters will be able to check your work. And they might just hold you accountable.
Clarence Page: Voter’s remorse? Not much, but give it time was originally published by the Tribune Content Agency and is shared with permission. Clarence Page is an American journalist, syndicated columnist, and senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on May 27, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Trump met with his Cabinet days after saying a peace deal with Iran was“ largely negotiated” amid expectations around the re-opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The worst deal in the history of deals
As a former Republican, sometimes it’s fun to look back on the things we — I was part of a “we” at one time — criticized Democrats for, and not all that long ago.
Remember, if you will, when Republicans condemned former President Bill Clinton for pardoning his brother and his corrupt donor friend Marc Rich?
Or, remember when Republicans wagged their fingers at former President Barack Obama’s golf outings? Or his executive orders? Or his Syrian “red line”?
Or all the times Republicans went after former President Joe Biden’s gaffes?
While those criticisms may have been justified at the time, they look patently ridiculous next to our current president’s cartoonish and downright dangerous offenses.
Offenses like pardoning Jan. 6 insurrectionists — nearly 100 of whom have gone on to be arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from the events of that day.
Or wreaking havoc on the global economy by instituting reckless tariffs on friends, neighbors, and enemies alike?
Or taking a proverbial sledge hammer to countless government agencies that have put every American in danger, whether on airplanes, in hospitals, at job sites, or in natural disasters.
That’s just a few, but nothing looks worse next to his predecessors than Donald Trump’s supposed Iran deal, at least as it’s outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding, the details of which Trump was loath to share.
And for good reason — they are shockingly bad and humiliating for the U.S.
I remember Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA from 2015 very well. I, along with many Republicans as well as a cadre of foreign policy experts, criticized that deal for its obvious and problematic concessions to a very bad actor who we’ve long known could not be trusted. But trust was what we gave the Iranian regime, as well as sudden access to a boatload of cash — $100 billion, to be exact.
All of Obama’s provisions were temporary, which would allow Iran to restart enriching uranium upon their sunset; the deal didn’t address Iran’s ballistic missiles, or its funding of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas; the supposed “anytime, anywhere” inspections came with a 24-day delay, if Iran so chose, giving them ample time to hide any suspect materials; and it didn’t require any congressional authority.
In short, I’d argue it wasn’t a great deal. But as bad as it was, it looks like the Magna Carta next to Trump’s.
Trump’s deal would give Iran immediate sanction relief and access to $300 billion, presumably to use to fund terror proxies; it doesn’t secure any upfront limits on uranium enrichment or missile development; it allows Iran to charge for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the future; and it calls for Israel to stop its attacks on Hezbollah, another win for Iran.
Neither Americans nor the Middle East are safer than we were 100-plus days ago when Trump decided to pursue this folly. And in fact, our economy is weaker for it. But Iran is unquestionably stronger and more emboldened.
They’ve seen Trump’s weakness, unseriousness, and frighteningly limited appreciation for history. They’ve seen him retreat on most of his core threats to the regime, from bombing their cultural sites to ending a civilization overnight. And they’ve taken notice as he’s abandoned the promises that were supposedly central to his justification for war in the first place — regime change, liberating the Iranian people, and removing Iran’s nuclear materials.
What a waste of blood and treasure, not to mention American might and power, only so that our enemies can watch us limp desperately toward a conclusion that’s being described — by the right — as “unthinkable,” “appeasement,” and “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.