Trump promised to take on what he called waste, fraud and abuse in government. He tapped Musk to lead the effort.

Musk turned his plan for a Department of Government Efficiency into one of the most polarizing and consequential pieces of Trump’s first 100 days.

The billionaire entrepreneur approached the task with a tech mogul ethos: break things, then see what you want to fix. Firings were widespread and indiscriminate. Programs were eliminated with limited analysis. The human consequences were left for others to sort out.

Musk’s team accessed sensitive databases and burrowed into little-known departments responsible for managing the government workforce and federal properties.

Republicans have long dreamed about scaling back the bureaucracy. But even veterans of Washington’s budget battles were stunned by the speed and ferocity of Musk’s work.

DOGE also made mistakes . Claims of massive savings did not add up. Musk wildly inflated estimates of how much taxpayer money is lost to fraud. His broadsides against Social Security, which he described as a “Ponzi scheme,” rattled retirees.

It is unlikely that Musk will accomplish his grand-scale goals . His plans for slashing $1 trillion out of the budget were pared back to $150 billion.

Trump and Musk lavish praise on each other. But Musk’s time in the administration is limited and Trump has begun talking about Musk’s work in the past tense.

“This guy did a fantastic job,” Trump said during a recent Cabinet meeting.