Musk Gets Out—and Gets Off Easy

Elon Musk attends a news conference with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. Evan Vucci/AP

Elon Musk packed his bags and skedaddled out of Washington, DC, last week, proclaiming that his run as a “special government employee” was done. It’s a good bet that he’ll continue to meddle in administration business, especially when he has a financial interest at stake, and will keep in contact with DOGErs and their ongoing crusade to dismantle crucial government programs. But his very public departure from Trump Town prompted reporters to pen farewells that did not do justice to the profound damage this erratic and dishonest gazillionaire has caused.

Writing up an interview he conducted with Musk, the Washington Post’s Christian Davenport opened with a “reflective” Musk musing, “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.” Davenport observed that Musk’s “attempts to reshape the federal bureaucracy ran into fierce institutional resistance.” He allowed Musk to praise himself as a hard-driving visionary—“If we’re not ultra-hardcore, how are we going to get to Mars?”—and to define his mission in Washington as “reducing waste and fraud.”

All of this bolsters the phony narrative pitched by Trump and Musk that DOGE was (and is) a project to ferret out the supposed rampant fraud and waste that infect the federal government. That has not been the case. Musk’s venture has been an assault on government services, not inefficient government expenditures. He and his DOGE minions slashed programs and decimated agencies without evaluating them. Waste and fraud was just a cover story. Too many in the news media have enabled this con and even promoted it.

Davenport did note that Musk’s “claims about finding massive savings and slashing waste in government have been shown to be exaggerated” and that he “did not achieve as much as he wanted.” But even this poke at the billionaire accepts Musk’s noble-sounding premise. His endeavor has not been to merely “reshape the federal bureaucracy,” as Davenport put it, but to eviscerate services and protections for millions and allow powerful interests to escape scrutiny, regulation, and oversight.

At the New York Times, a multi-bylined article—Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman, Theodore Schleifer, Jonathan Swann, and Ryan Mac—reported that Musk was “disillusioned with Washington and frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he upended the federal bureaucracy.” Upended the bureaucracy is another all-too neutral way to characterize how he and his henchpeople demolished agencies. The piece noted that Musk had thanked Trump for “the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending” and called his effort “an initiative to drastically cut spending.”

Like the Washington Post, the Times wrote, “Musk’s DOGE team has repeatedly inflated its cost-saving efforts, at times posting erroneous claims about ending federal contracts that they later deleted.” And it noted that the “cuts he wanted to enact were far more difficult than he expected.” Again, the story presented was that of Musk seeking to counter wasteful spending and failing to achieve as much as he desired.

Neither piece mentioned how Musk and his libertarian shock troops killed the US Agency for International Development and ended lifesaving assistance for recipients throughout the world. Nor did they cover other dishonorable DOGE accomplishments. Musk and his posse blew up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which prevents vulturous financial firms from ripping off billions of dollars from Americans. They undermined or closed programs key to food safety, workplace safety, environmental safety, and aviation safety. DOGE cuts at the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and other agencies have devastated a generation of science and research. They forced mass firings at the State Department and the CIA that will weaken these organizations and imperil national security. They ripped up programs to track and address climate change. Firefighters, park rangers, weather forecasters, IRS tax collectors, Social Security clerks, Census Bureau workers, employees at Veterans Affairs who help our wounded warriors—all booted out of important jobs.

None of this was related to waste and fraud. And let’s stick with Musk’s attack on USAID. In February, he called this agency that has helped millions of people around the world avoid malaria, Ebola, and AIDS, obtain clean water, and gain access to food and health care “a criminal organization.” Yes, the richest man in the world said that. The following month, not surprisingly, he belittled the idea of empathy. He also claimed, “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding. No one.” Not true. Brooke Nichols, an infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist at Boston University, has created a tracker that estimates the number of deaths overseas caused by the Musk-driven suspension of foreign aid. As of this weekend, the number of adult deaths reached 100,000, and deaths for children topped 208,000. This is obscene.

Yet the big idea for these media outlets is that Musk was frustrated he didn’t make more progress in his battle against waste and fraud. But it wasn’t a war on waste and fraud in government. It was a war on government.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have done wonderful investigations of Musk and DOGE. Last week, the Times exposed his intense use of drugs, including ketamine, and reported on how DOGE-driven reversals of regulations will cost Americans billions in higher bank fees, electric and water bills, and health insurance payments. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has penned moving pieces about the lethal consequences of Musk’s annihilation of USAID.

But throughout the Musk Terror, much of the media failed to accurately characterize what this alt-right, conspiracy-pushing, oddball, drug-addled (?), anti-empathy tech billionaire was really doing. (Then there’s the whole DOGE effort to get its grubby mitts on government data for who-knows-what reasons.) Musk waged a vicious assault. He did not seek to evaluate programs and agencies to root out inefficiencies or activities that were no longer vital. He aimed to destroy. Hundreds of thousands of people will die because of him. Millions of Americans will suffer. Who cares if he is frustrated or disillusioned? The story is not what happened to Musk; it’s what he has done to all of us.

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Donald Trump wants to cut tens of billions of dollars from the United States budget for science. That’s what his administration is proposing in the budget it just released. This is one of the greatest self-wounds in the history of nation-states.

Science is one of the main propellants of American prosperity and progress. It generates both knowledge and products that fuel the US economy, and it leads to enhancements of our national well-being. Don’t we want the United States to be on the cutting edge of biomedical research, engineering, and technological advances? Government-funded research programs draw many of the smartest people in the world to the United States and encourage the basic science research that allows industries to develop innovative products.

Strangling science in the United States is like restricting the flow of oxygen to the human body. Yet that appears to be Trump’s intent. After slashing the current spending of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other government entities that underwrite scientific research, he has proposed a budget with more draconian cuts. Look at this chart:

Why are Trump and his MAGA minions doing this? Do they think science is too liberal? Is it woke to search for a cure to Alzheimer’s or to seek ways to make supercomputers more efficient and less costly to operate? If they think this is somehow saving us money, that is foolish. Robust scientific research yields greater understanding of the world and creates opportunity for improving and advancing the human condition. It’s hard to make a country great without it.

Add up the numbers. The combined budgets of NIH, NSF, and NASA are little more than 1 percent of the entire federal budget. This will not help us fiscally or make us smarter.

The Last of Us, Season 2. Can a quality television show lose its mojo? I fear that’s what happened in the second season of The Last of Us, HBO’s previously marvelous zombie series.

As I noted during the first season, The Last of Us, based on a popular video game and co-created by Craig Mazin, who produced the magnificent series Chernobyl, was one of the best outings of zombie-tainment. Which is a high compliment. In its apocalyptic world, a fungal infection has hit humans, turning much of our species into an interconnected horde of cannibalistic zombies. A large chunk of modern civilization is destroyed, and what’s left of the United States is ruled by a military government, which is opposed by a resistance called the Fireflies. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler operating out of the remains of Boston, is forced by circumstances to partner up with Ellie (Bella Ramsey), an annoying (of course) teen, who’s immune to the infection. He begrudgingly agrees to escort her to Salt Lake City, where a medical unit of the Fireflies might be able to use her to derive a cure to the infection.

The first season had a sense of daring. Sure, there were the obligatory scenes of grotesque “infecteds” chasing our good guys and munching on others. But the series focused on human relationships—one stunning episode chronicled the years-long romantic relationship of two side characters, a pair of gay men who found each other and love in the ashes of society—and it examined the tough choices survival entails. The final episode ended with a harrowing choice made by Joel that raised profound questions. The show was a thrilling ride with much to gnaw on.

Then came season 2. It’s hard to discuss without spoilers. So feel free to stop here. The big shocker was Joel’s murder in the second episode. That harrowing choice from season 1? Well, it had lots of consequences. For Joel and Ellie, and for the world. And for us the viewers. Pascal’s performance had been superb. Joel lost his own daughter in the initial infection, and becoming a surrogate father for Ellie was both arduous and redeeming for him. He came to love her—and possibly too much. The removal of this intriguing tough guy—a development true to the narrative of the video game—knocked a lot of air out of the show.

The rest of this most recent season follows Ellie’s quest for revenge. Unfortunately, this mission is not that interesting. And how it transpires often seems forced. She and her new love interest, another teen named Dina (Isabela Merced), must ride on horseback from their well-functioning and relatively safe settlement in Jackson, Wyoming, to Seattle, a trip that would likely last well over a month and be loaded with challenges. Yet in TV-time it takes only a few scenes, and they arrive at the devastated city quite fresh.

Then there is a slew of not-very-smart choices—most of all, the decision to stick with this dangerous mission once they learn that Dina is pregnant. There are interesting politics in Seattle. A militia headed by a former soldier named Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) is engaged in mortal combat with a cult of forest-dwellers who are quite handy with bows-and-arrows and scythes. But that’s all a backdrop for Ellie’s spiteful crusade, which eventually turns her into a torturer and murderer—a move that undercuts our sympathy for her.

The season’s arc is supposed to teach her—and us—about the perils of vengeance. But the lesson seems too obvious. This second installment ends with a gunshot cliffhanger. At the conclusion of season 1, I cared about what was next for Joel and Ellie, but now I feel less invested in Ellie’s fate. I’m more concerned for the people she left behind.

Hacks, Season 4. There are not many TV shows and films about one of the fundamental pillars of American culture: the late-night talk show. The Larry Sanders Show, created by and starring comedian Garry Shandling, was a wry and witty send-up of the genre, circa the 1990s. More recently, Apple TV+’s The Morning Show probed the early AM version. With its fourth, certain-to-win-more-Emmys season, Hacks pushed its way into this delicious terrain.

This Max series has been a winner since it premiered. Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is an aging comedian with a residency in Vegas, a stale act, and lots of products to push on QVC—think Joan Rivers—and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) is a young and anxious aspiring comedy writer in Los Angeles with a boatload of insecurities. They share an agent, who hooks them up, and—presto!—we have one of television’s great odd couples. Over three seasons, their relationship veers wildly, as the overly earnest and PC-ish Ava helps to retool this mother-of-all-divas, and Deborah showers Ava with too much tough love. It’s a classic frenemies situation that usually (but not always) lands on the warmer side of the spectrum. Since this is a sitcom, they, naturally, are surrounded by a crew of well-drawn eccentric characters.

The series runs on sass. Smart and Einbinder have the right chemistry. There’s plenty of poking fun at the world of comedy and showbiz. And, no surprise, Deborah and Ava discover that they each need the other. It’s a buddy show. In the latest season, the two have together reached the pinnacle of the industry: Deborah becomes the first woman to host a late-night show. (In real life, Rivers did that in 1986 with Fox.) And Ava—due to a vicious move she pulled that was inspired by Deborah’s own ruthlessness—is the youngest head writer for a late-night show. This triumph allows the show to guide us behind the curtain, as Deborah and Ava contend with network politics, talk-show rivals (Jimmy Kimmel!), and tremendous pressure to succeed.

It can be hard to sustain a love-hate relationship on a TV show for years. (How did Cheers do it?) But by tossing Deborah and Ava into the shark tank of late-night, Hacks keeps the bit fresh, as we wonder whether their dysfunctional but productive relationship will help them conquer this pinnacle of the entertainment world or cause them to be crushed by it.