Elon Musk’s impact as a temporary government employee who oversaw sweeping cuts to the federal workforce and programs has caused long-lasting instability, Maggie Haberman, the New York Times White House correspondent, said Friday.
Haberman, a longtime Trump reporter who has intimate knowledge about internal White House relationships and communications, told MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” that Musk’s time serving as Trump’s right-hand man “created so much destabilization.”
“You had Elon Musk…essentially serving not as a co-president but as a co-president, for parts of the first four months or so,” Haberman said, referring to Musk’s role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency and senior adviser to Trump.
“And that created so much destabilization of this government that I think they also never quite recovered,” Haberman added.
While Haberman did not elaborate on what she meant by “destabilization,” Musk’s time as a de facto co-president was marked by a series of chaotic policies and decisions made by the tech trillionaire who quickly amassed power and access to sensitive information.
In his brief stint as a special government employee, Musk managed to upend the traditional bureaucratic processes in favor of quick decisions that he insisted would cut red tape and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.
But even after leaving his position, in part due to a fallout with the president over policy differences, some of Musk’s actions are still being scrutinized in court systems and by lawmakers.
Just this year, federal judges have ruled that Musk’s attempts to cut more than $100 million in grants to scholars, research groups and organizations were unconstitutional, as well as allowed a lawsuit over DOGE’s access to sensitive data to move forward.
Democrats have asked the Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog to open a probe into DOGE’s access to sensitive Social Security data and the Department of Education’s internal watchdog to investigate DOGE’s access to data in the student aid office, among others.
Federal employees have described the chaotic process of Musk’s efforts to dismantle the federal workforce through deferred resignations, firings, reduction-in-forces and more. Some, who lost their jobs, were then given second chances after federal judges reinstated their positions.
A few departments and agencies, such as the IRS, have reportedly been forced to bolster hiring techniques after losing too many employees.
Haberman said she and her co-author, New York Times investigative reporter Jonathan Swan, go into more detail about Musk’s time in the White House during Trump’s first year of his second term in their new book Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
