While nearly everyone who isn’t a MAGA supporter is decrying the actions of DOGE, the goals and strategies of Trump and Musk are coming more clearly into focus. While people criticize the chaos and confusion, most of them don’t notice why Trump and Musk are proceeding as they are. Since the opposition assumes that the objective is to gleefully upset and disorient federal employees, they don’t realize that other outcomes are developing below the surface.

Of course, the media catastrophizes and criticizes most of their actions:

Don’t be shocked or awed. The daily explosion of chaos and confusion emanating from the White House during the first month of the new Trump administration is a political strategy intended to minimize accountability by leaving the president’s critics demoralized, distracted, and disoriented, unable to figure out which battles should be fought.

And hyperbole seems to be the media stock-in-trade:

Daily reports of federal workers being summarily fired by the thousands are running side by side with tales of businessman Elon Musk and his DOGE team and his ransacking databases and making wild, unproven claims of government fraud.

[snip]

Whenever Trump or his aides start blowing smoke, the question to ask is: What are they trying to hide? In my opinion, the most important story to focus on — the one that they want us all to ignore — is the shocking, open corruption and self-dealing by Musk and the Trump family.

These two paragraphs are concocted to discredit, but mostly lie, about what Musk and Trump are doing. First of all, “thousands” of bureaucrats are just a drop in the bucket of the federal workforce, as the U.S. government is the nation’s largest employer with more than 3 million employees. Secondly, neither Musk nor his crew are “ransacking” data bases as they only have access to “read only” files, and lastly, they have certainly not offered up “unproven claims of government fraud” — USAID has in fact sent billions to a huge number of highly inappropriate programs, and trillions are unaccounted for. Suggesting that Trump, a billionaire in his own right, and Musk, the richest man in the world, are trying to enhance their “self-dealing” and making tons of money in plain sight is bizarre.

It’s clear that the media and the left are terrified of the waste, abuse, and fraud that will continue to be found, so they have to find something to protest. And their big issues are the “chaos” that has ensued, and the speed with which the work is being executed.

I’d like to suggest that Trump and Musk share a purpose underneath the chaos and confusion:

1. People may initially be stunned into watching and waiting for what will transpire, before they react. There may be a level of denial about whether they will be targeted. This inaction keeps them interfering less with DOGE’s work.
2. There’s no justification for slowing down DOGE; the harder they work, the sooner the initial pain will be over.
3. The chaotic agenda inhibits people who will want to destroy evidence or try to clean up their acts.
4. Requests from DOGE are met by some with anger and resistance, such as the memo to return a list of five tasks they did in the past week. Instead of complying, which would provide a small example of “working with the team,” they are refusing to respond, which does nothing to help their credibility.
5. Waiting for investigations and staff changes made by department heads would only extend the pain and confusion, due to the time that could be required for decision-making.
6. Departments who want to take the initiative to clean up their acts concurrently, however, are free to do so, such as the work of Tom Homan, border czar, or Pam Bondi with sanctuary cities.
7. Although the disruption has an effect on legislators, as they try to reassure their citizens, they should take notes, since these are things that they should have been doing all along, by holding agencies accountable, rather than enabling the administrative state.
8. If either Musk or Trump have stepped out of their lanes, the courts will eventually sort it out; if the federal courts won’t do it, perhaps SCOTUS will.
9. Some fired workers have gone from legislator office to legislator office complaining about their situations. They might be better off updating their resumes.
10. Finally, Trump continually reminds the public that his actions are why they voted for him.

The people wanted him to drain the swamp by clearing out fraud, waste, and abuse, return us to more conventional values, such as removing men from women’s sports, and perhaps most importantly—make America great again.

Hail to the Chief!

Image generated by AI.