Trying to Run the U.S. Like Tesla, Musk Gets Laughed Out of D.C.: “An Assembly Line Clown Has No Authority Here

In the annals of American government, there have been few characters as polarizing—and as unexpectedly out of place—as Elon Musk. Once hailed as the visionary architect of private space exploration and electric vehicles, Musk's short-lived foray into the highest levels of government bureaucracy is ending not with triumph, but with mockery.

His recent demand that federal workers submit a weekly list of five accomplishments was not only largely ignored, but also brazenly ridiculed. Now, as Musk prepares to step away from his position at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a question looms: Did he ever truly understand the system he tried to disrupt?

Back in February, in a move that reeked more of a Silicon Valley startup than a government office, Musk sent an ominous email to federal workers via the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). It wasn’t a request—it was a decree. Each worker, regardless of department or rank, was to send in a list of five things they had achieved during the previous week. Any failure to comply, the email warned, would be treated as a resignation.

Musk intended it as a sharp wake-up call—a push to force government employees to constantly prove their worth or be swept aside in his relentless quest for efficiency.

But the response? Silence, indifference, and laughter.

According to a report by The Washington Post, the initiative crumbled almost immediately. Just two days after Musk’s missive, OPM issued another email to federal HR officers. This second email contradicted Musk directly: the five-accomplishment mandate was deemed voluntary, not binding, and non-compliance would have no consequences.

Worse yet for Musk, it admitted that the agency had no plan to process or act on the responses that might come in. It was an embarrassing walk-back that underscored the deeper dysfunction between Musk’s rhetoric and federal government reality.

The failure of Musk’s directive revealed much about his time in office. He came into DOGE with a reputation as a disruptor, touting a goal of slashing $2 trillion in federal spending. But after more than a year, even by his own contested metrics, he had identified only $150 billion in cuts—just 7.5% of his original promise.

The “wall of receipts” on DOGE’s website, meant to document these savings, has been repeatedly criticized for exaggerations, flawed math, and outright misinformation. The savings, critics argue, are less real fiscal victories than PR stunts designed to impress Musk’s tech-world base.

Beyond the questionable numbers, Musk’s style was the issue. The mantra of “move fast and break things” might serve a startup well, but in a federal government with over two million employees, such an approach is both reckless and naive.

Musk tried to transplant a corporate culture rooted in chaos, hierarchy, and personal ambition into a public institution built on rules, equity, and institutional memory. The transplant failed.

Some departments quietly stopped enforcing the weekly report request. Others officially required the reports but never followed up, creating a façade of compliance. Some employees submitted the same generic template week after week, others wrote back in foreign languages—a subtle form of civil disobedience. It was, in effect, open mockery.

This rebellion wasn’t just about resisting Musk. It was also about defending the principle of career service against political intrusion. Musk, a political outsider, underestimated the deeply ingrained territorial lines that define the federal bureaucracy.

Agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) quickly reasserted their authority, declaring that they would manage performance reviews internally and that Musk’s emails were “optional.” Some departments, like the IRS and Social Security Administration, reportedly began removing DOGE personnel from internal operations altogether.

The backlash to Musk’s heavy-handedness signals something rare in the modern American political landscape: institutional resilience. It turns out that not even the richest man on Earth can bend the federal workforce entirely to his will.

Despite tens of thousands of job cuts, agency closures like that of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and budgetary threats, many civil servants remained unmoved. The bureaucratic state, so often derided as sluggish or complacent, showed flashes of quiet defiance and organizational self-preservation.

That isn’t to say Musk’s tenure was harmless. Programs that once saved lives or offered essential social services have vanished or diminished in the wake of his cost-cutting. The effects of these reductions will take months, if not years, to fully manifest. Millions may suffer because of the shuttering of agencies like USAID, while vital systems like Social Security face new strains due to fewer staff and disorganized processes. Musk’s time in government left real scars.

Still, the contrast between Musk’s ambition and his outcomes speaks volumes. His supporters may hail his actions as bold attempts to rein in a bloated bureaucracy, but the results suggest something else entirely: a failure to adapt, a misunderstanding of governance, and a deep underestimation of institutional inertia.

The Office of Government Efficiency, under Musk’s leadership, did not become a lean, high-performing engine of reform. It became a cautionary tale. A place where a man famous for launching rockets and building AI chatbots tried, and failed, to manage a constitutional democracy like a Tesla production line.

In some ways, Musk’s trajectory mirrors that of another populist technocrat: a leader who believes his personal genius can outmaneuver centuries of structure, precedent, and law. But governments are not factories. Civil servants are not factory-line workers. And America, as Musk now realizes, is not a car company.

As he steps down from his role at DOGE, it is unlikely he will admit defeat. He may blame “the deep state,” or claim his innovations were simply too advanced for Washington to understand. But the reality is clearer to those who have watched this saga unfold: a CEO walked into a centuries-old institution expecting it to bow. Instead, it shrugged.

And in the corridors of power, from agency offices to HR departments, the whispers are growing louder. “He thought he could run America like a car factory,” one official quipped. “But this isn’t Tesla—and he’s not the boss here.”

That sentiment, echoed across dozens of departments, may be the truest verdict of all. Musk came to Washington with a mission to change everything. In the end, Washington changed him.