Musk Changes Tune, Says He's Not Behind Government Firings

Earlier this year, unelected White House advisor and billionaire Elon Musk made a splashy appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, wielding a golden chainsaw gifted to him by Argentina's president and self-described anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei.

Photos show the richest man in the world brandishing the chainsaw — a particularly unsubtle symbol for the ruthless cutting of government spending — and hoisting it above his head with a gleeful rictus.

The striking appearance served as a strained metaphor for Musk's efforts to systematically gut the US government from the inside out with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which he — for all intents and purposes — leads.

"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he boasted even earlier in February, referring to the organization responsible for supplying aid around the world. "Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead."

In other words, it seems crystal clear that Musk has been behind the cuts; he's repeatedly bragged about his role in them. Yet in a bewildering change of tune, the billionaire is now trying to distance himself from the dumpster fire, as CNN reports, blaming the agencies his DOGE has been targeting for mass layoffs.

DOGE has been singling out a long list of government agencies, forcing them to make brutal cuts to their budgets and come up with plans for future layoffs. Musk has even personally threatened federal workers with being fired if they didn't successfully justify their jobs.

A now-infamous email sent to government employees last month asked them to explain what work they did over the last week, with "failure to respond," as Musk tweeted, "taken as a resignation."

DOGE has overseen massive amounts of government job cullings, pushing the overall number of layoffs to the highest level in the country since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent report.

Musk has also personally singled out the aforementioned US International Development Agency, accusing it of being "evil." The department, which oversees lifesaving research and humanitarian efforts, was gutted by DOGE earlier this year.

And the cuts just keep on coming. Earlier this week, news emerged that DOGE would be culling more than 70,000 employees as part of a restructuring at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

But Musk all of a sudden wants nothing to do with the disastrous dismantling. Republican representative Derrick Van Orden told CNN that Musk informed a group of GOP lawmakers that the Veterans Affairs cut "wasn't a DOGE decision."

According to CNN's sources, Musk also tried to distance himself more broadly from widespread firings across agencies, blaming them on federal department heads instead.

It's a puzzling new stance considering Musk's well-documented, personal involvement.

Musk has previously attempted to distance himself by claiming that DOGE only recommends agencies to make job cuts and that it's not inherently responsible for those cuts, as The New Republic reports.

Yet considering Musk has personally threatened to fire government workers who don't fall in line, that line of argumentation comes off as disingenuous.

What's currently motivating the billionaire to distance himself from DOGE and its unscrupulous cuts? Is it the risk of a massive economic downturn, triggered by a tidal wave of unemployment and tariffs? Or is he simply growing aware of the overwhelmingly negative optics surrounding his bull-in-a-china-shop approach?

Another possibility is that Musk is trying to unravel himself from the chaos to rescue his ailing carmaker. Tesla has been in dire straits, with sales numbers falling precipitously worldwide.

A huge proportion of the mercurial entrepreneur's net worth is tied up with the EV maker. As Forbes reports, Tesla's massive stock nosedive has caused Musk's net worth to drop a stunning $121 billion from its latest record of $464 billion, set in mid-December, roughly three weeks before Trump was inaugurated.

Besides blaming agency heads, Musk also admitted that he's prone to making "mistakes."

"He said, like, you know, there’s going to be mistakes along the way," a GOP lawmaker told CNN. "He has said that publicly before too. And then when those are identified, they will be corrected."

To be clear, there's very little room for error. This isn't a microblogging website that Musk is running into the ground — it's the US government. Making "mistakes" doesn't just run the risk of hurting a private company's stock; it could quite literally cost thousands of people's lives.

The latest report could also be an indication that Republicans, who have largely watched from the sidelines as Musk plowed through the government with abandon, are ready to reassert their power.

"It is time for the White House now to go on offense," said senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), as quoted by CNN. "We are losing altitude here."

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