EVEN AFTER MISSTEPS AND DEMOCRATIC ATTACKS, DOGE SUPPORT IS STILL STRONG. President Donald Trump has an obvious fondness for Elon Musk, but when he is asked about the DOGE chief, Trump sometimes begins by noting how recent their acquaintance is. “So, number one, I didn’t know him well until the campaign,” Trump told me during a White House interview this week. “But when he decided to go for me, he went big.”
Trump explained that not only is Musk a “smart guy,” but “he’s also got a following.” The Tesla and SpaceX founder and owner of X “is somebody that’s respected by a lot of people.” That was important to Trump last year as he ran for the White House. “I needed somebody that could speak and be respected when he spoke,” the president said.
Anyone who followed the campaign would understand. Covering a Trump rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the final weeks of the campaign, I was struck by the number of Republicans and independents in attendance who held Musk in extremely high regard. They saw him as a brilliant man who should have some role in a Trump administration, if there was to be one, and they were happy to hear that he might be given the job of increasing government efficiency.
Musk poured millions of dollars, tons of resources, and a lot of time working for Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania. He did not formally endorse Trump until July 13, the night Trump was shot at a rally in Butler. A few months later, on Oct. 7, Musk was cavorting onstage behind Trump at the second Butler rally.
After that, Trump’s view of Musk was entirely understandable. Musk not only had hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on behalf of the campaign, but his support also conferred an additional measure of standing to the effort. Last year, Musk was not only the world’s richest man, not only the man who resurrected the American role in space, not only the man who became a hero to climate activists for his work building electric cars, but he was all of those things and celebrating the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. From the candidate’s perspective, what’s not to like?
Equally popular was the idea of rooting out waste and fraud in government. In poll after poll over many years, Americans have said they believe there is a lot of waste and fraud in government and that they want their elected officials to cut it. A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that “70% of voters say government expenditures are filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency.” Breaking down the numbers, Harvard-Harris found that position was supported by 58% of Democrats, 78% of Republicans, and 75% of independents.
So, Trump had a popular man, Musk, and a popular cause, cutting government waste, to put together. The new administration was the perfect context for the creation of DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.
Now, two months later, the cause is still popular — the public still knows there is a large amount of government waste. And Trump is still pretty popular — the new Fox News poll has his job approval rating at 49% approve and 51% disapprove. While that’s not the high popularity some presidents have enjoyed at the beginning of their terms, it’s high for Trump.
The new factor, though, is the vilification campaign launched by Democrats, and many of their media allies, against Musk. It hasn’t reached the intensity of, say, the media megaphoning of Russia allegations in 2017 and all the wild commentary that went along with it, but it’s intense. And it has succeeded in driving Musk’s favorability down, which risks driving down the popularity of the entire government efficiency and anti-waste campaign.
There’s no doubt that the effort to villainize Musk has made some progress. Musk himself has not helped his own image by doing things such as vamping onstage with a chain saw to symbolize his efforts to cut the size of government. That moment was, unfortunately, Musk’s most effective effort at communication, and it made him look bad. He has also been less than successful at answering Democratic attacks that he will cut Social Security, that he will deny veterans healthcare, that he will make flying more dangerous, and much, much more.
The interesting thing is that even with the anti-Musk campaign, there is still strong support for the DOGE effort. A new NBC poll, which found Musk had a positive rating of just 39%, got some striking results when it asked which of the following best describes the DOGE effort: “1) It should continue, as much more needs to be done; 2) It is needed but should slow down to assess the impact; 3) It is reckless and should stop now before more damage is done; and 4) There is no need to cut the size of the federal government and its spending.”
Thirty-three percent said DOGE should continue, while 28% said it is needed but should slow down. On the other side, 33% said it is reckless and should stop, while 4% said there is no need to cut federal spending.
Add 33% and 28%, and you get 61% who support the concept of and the need for DOGE. That’s a solid majority — still solid after all the attacks. On the other side, just 33% say DOGE should stop. And just 4% — 4%! — will defend the notion that government spending isn’t a problem.
In our conversation at the White House, Trump was enthusiastic about DOGE. “We’ve found many, many billions of dollars of just pure fraud,” he said. How did he view the predictable Democratic allegations that Musk might mess with Social Security payments or Medicare or air traffic control? “That’s the message the Democrats are putting out,” Trump answered. “They can still put out a message. But if you take a look at the polls overall, the Republicans are doing great … and the Democrats have their lowest numbers in history.”
And indeed, Democrats do have their lowest numbers in history. Just look at this CNN headline from last weekend: “CNN Poll: Democratic Party’s favorability drops to a record low.” “Among the American public overall, the Democratic Party’s favorability rating stands at just 29% — a record low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992 and a drop of 20 points since January 2021,” the network reported.
What all that shows is that even after DOGE’s missteps, poor communications, and a fierce Democratic attack on Musk, the Trump administration still has solid support to continue its effort to curb government waste and inefficiency. It should certainly do a better and more thorough job of explaining what it is doing. And the president is right to remind the country periodically that he, Donald Trump, and not Elon Musk, is in charge of DOGE and everything else the administration does. Right now, Trump has the support to keep it up.