Dave Murray
At the time of writing, the world’s richest man Elon Musk has stepped down as the head of the US government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), following a “physical altercation” with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in and around the Oval Office. Eyewitnesses say that Bessent confronted Musk with the suggestion that DOGE, despite firing thousands of federal employees, has saved only $100 million from the federal budget. This is the figure that Bessent contrasted to the $1 trillion savings claimed by Musk at that time.
The combatants were fighting over whose man would get to be the new head of the IRS, the USA’s tax levying authority – still a powerful figure even after thousands of IRS employees have been laid off by DOGE. Having lost the shouting match (the wrestling was cut short by members of the Secret Service), Musk has since announced that he will be spending more time with his money.
Financiers and investors involved in Musk’s various commercial enterprises (Space X, X, Grok AI, Tesla etc) are said to be relieved that he will be paying more attention to these and hoping that he can get them back on track following the damage done to brands like Tesla by antics such as the Nazi salutes Musk publicly gave during his tenure as the ‘first Buddy’. Musk’s intimacy with the world’s most powerful man had a lot to do with the $300 million donated to Trump’s election war chest.
Final straw
Fellow tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg coined the phrase “move fast and break things”, and Musk certainly did that, unleashing a small army of tech and finance bros onto various federal agencies, firing people in their thousands with little serious thought for the consequences. Even though the consequences were a malfunctioning state, plummeting popularity and widespread ridicule – which began to rub off on the commander in chief. Musk’s criticism of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax cuts for the rich, tariffs and cuts to the social wage of millions of Americans (to be clear, he didn’t criticise the tax cuts) was the final straw.
Nobody should be under the illusion that Musk’s departure represents a return to ‘business as usual’ or even a drug-free White House (Musk is said to self-medicate with MDMA, Psilocybin and Ketamine). The Trump presidency represents the rise of a section of the capitalist class that advocates naked self-interest and the promotion of toxic narratives in a desperate attempt to halt and reverse the US’s relative decline in global terms. On the other hand, there are sections of the capitalist class that oppose his tariff moves, over which Trump faces legal challenges in the courts.
It’s a matter of time before the working class in the US and internationally is drawn into the political arena to have its own say.
