The early shuttering of an agency that was supposed to embody the spirit of the Trump administration revealed how hollow the MAGA movement's rhetoric on small government is, according to one GOP strategist.
President Donald Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency within his first days in office and tasked the agency with significantly shrinking the size of the federal government. The agency was run by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who said DOGE would cut federal spending by about $2 trillion.
However, DOGE has been disbanded with eight months left on its mandate, according to reports. To Mike Madrid, a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, DOGE's early end represents another "spectacular failure" for the Trump administration.
"The agency that once promised to revolutionize federal spending, led by the world’s richest man wielding a literal chainsaw at conservative conferences, has quietly shuttered eight months ahead of schedule—a spectacular failure that reveals fundamental truths about Donald Trump’s second term and the hollowness of MAGA’s small-government rhetoric," Madrid wrote in a new Substack essay.
"The Republican Party’s rhetoric about smaller government is a sham," Madrid continued. "A crock. A ruse for grifters to wrap themselves in the American flag and call themselves patriots. It’s a sad tale really, about a people so wholly empty in a country so fat with largesse that they need to cos-play as patriots rather than do the real work of trying to help their fellow countrymen."