Elon Musk arrived in Washington as the most powerful political outsider ever, brimming with Silicon Valley swagger and bipartisan buy-in for his goal of streamlining the federal government.
He’s leaving with his reputation wounded, relationships severed, companies in crisis, fortune diminished — and little to show for DOGE but chaos and contested savings.
Why it matters: Musk may not have achieved his audacious goal of cutting $2 trillion from America’s debt, but the disruption he unleashed inside the federal government — for better or for worse — will reverberate for decades.