It would be great to see some justice for the enormous harm done, same for ICE, but if only the collaborators get punished then it's bittersweet at best.
Its clearly unfair if only the little fish get punished while the big fish don't.
OTOH, in practical terms, you can't have big fish without little fish supporting them, so if you drive up the perceived cost of being a little fish, you make it harder for future would-be big fish even without the (obviously preferable) direct accountability for them, so its better than nothing.
(EDIT: originally had some both incorrect and unnecessarily indirect "former/latter" references, replaced with more direct language.)
I cant get over who politico goes out of its way to portray them as sympathetically as possible, out of its way to downplay what went on as much as humanly possible ... while still making them sound bad. For example:
> All the cut contracts and purported savings were triumphantly (if at times misleadingly and inaccurately) itemized on a new DOGE.gov website.
Yeah, they lied openly and brazenly in those numbers. They were not "at times misleading and inaccurate", that is making it sound much better then it was.
Imagine politico would try to report on it fairly and accurately instead of playing the "how can I make these people sound as good as possible while not lying too much" game.
That's because politico reports on politics from an "inside baseball" perspective. The focus is much more on the mechanics of politics and government as it happens/operates, and less so on the actual policies. To do this effectively, they need access, and so will consistently softball or smooth over things.
As they say right at the start of their "About Us", "POLITICO illuminates the forces shaping global power".
This ia beyond insiders baseball. You can do insiders baseball without going out of your way to whitewash as much.They dont just softball. They defend and literally go out of their way to imply false things - all to protect republicans.
They are not illuminating powers. They are obscuring uncomfortable acts and behavior or republican party.
> After Musk bought Twitter, Davis and his wife, Nicole Hollander, slept in the San Francisco headquarters of the Twitter office with their one-month-old child while they helped Musk cut the social media company to the bone. Once, according to a Musk biographer, they spent a Christmas Eve helping Musk move data servers.
From the linked Politico story.
This is just sad. I cannot begin to understand what motivates someone to do this. Sending people to the moon, curing cancer, sure. But sacrificing so much to fire people from a social media company?
I think the figure Musk circulated was that it was losing $4M / day. Although that probably includes the interest bill on the debt used for financing and might be inflated.
This is just wishful thinking. Unfortunately the damage they came to do has been done and without an act of the legislature (less likely than an act of god) the damage will stay done.
Seems like a non-story, why wouldn't trump simply pardon them? These would be some of the more obvious pardons to hand out, and there's clearly no longer a precedent by either party to hand out pardons sparingly.
We didn't call them useful idiots for no reason. Naive idealists make great foot soldiers, but their reward is to be ultimately expendable. When all of the damage from "DOGE" gets perceived as politically inconvenient, the narrative will morph into something like these were cowboys doing unauthorized things at Musk's behest, not directed or approved by Dear Leader.
It's understandable how they would think otherwise because Musk fell for the same shit (first time Republican supporter didn't realize the cries about the debt are pure kayfabe, lol). But the thing Musk has is the means to insulate himself from the (direct) fallout.
> the narrative will morph into something like these were cowboys doing unauthorized things at Musk's behest
They just knowingly broke the law. They are not saying "omg, I thought I am doing fully legal thing". They are saying "omg, the mafia boss does not have interest or power to protect me anymore after I broke the law for him". And they
are saying it very very literally:
> the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came.
This is not about "narrative changing". This is them working for crime boss, knowingly and now finding out crime boss does not care anymore.
I was making that point in the context of the Trump Cinematic Universe, which includes both these committed true-believers as well as the clueless cheerleaders still simping along at home.
The narrative there is/was that since Trump won the election, anything he decrees has a mandate from "the people" (cue Bane voice). So when the useful idiots were acting, they saw the law as irrelevant - everything they were doing was for the cause and thus they'd be protected (naive).
But obviously Trump's directly-harmful America-last policies are eventually going to be felt by a lot of the grassroots cheerleaders who think he's some kind of savior. At which point to try and maintain their support, it's going to become politically important to write off the harmful results by attributing them to some scapegoats. And the clear scapegoats for many things are Musk and his merry band of governmental arsonists.
If these employees knowingly performed illegal acts, but believed that being close to Musk/Trump meant that they wouldn't face the music, then what kind of law enforcement/justice is there remaining in the U.S.?
It's also galling as it seems to be the opposite of the Nuremberg defense - employees can knowingly do illegal acts as long as their boss/commander wants them to. A complete lack of personal responsibility.
> If these employees knowingly performed illegal acts, but believed that being close to Musk/Trump meant that they wouldn't face the music, then what kind of law enforcement/justice is there remaining in the U.S.?
If Trump actually pardons them, and their crimes were exclusively federal, then none (barring something like a Constitutional amendment invalidating pardons, or providing a mechanism to do so, which seems quite improbable.)
If Trump doesn't pardon them, or any state crimes were committed, then potentially some (though, for federal crimes, unless the Trump Justice Department actively prosecutes them, which seems improbable even in the absence of a pardon, that requires the crime have a sufficiently long statute of limitations to be prosecutable in a subsequent administration, and even if that is in 2029 there is only a short window for most federal crimes, which have a five year statute of limitations, and I would suspect there is going to be a big investigative and prosecutorial backlog to address at that time.)
DOGE employees did nothing illegal, name what crime was committed?
They were the result of the democratic process the left claims we need to protect. Trump ran on cutting waste and fraud and corruption in government and DOGE was intended to do that.
It would be great to see some justice for the enormous harm done, same for ICE, but if only the collaborators get punished then it's bittersweet at best.
Its clearly unfair if only the little fish get punished while the big fish don't.
OTOH, in practical terms, you can't have big fish without little fish supporting them, so if you drive up the perceived cost of being a little fish, you make it harder for future would-be big fish even without the (obviously preferable) direct accountability for them, so its better than nothing.
(EDIT: originally had some both incorrect and unnecessarily indirect "former/latter" references, replaced with more direct language.)
whoever gets punished will be pardoned eventually
This article links to a longer, more detailed article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/21/doge-elon-....
I cant get over who politico goes out of its way to portray them as sympathetically as possible, out of its way to downplay what went on as much as humanly possible ... while still making them sound bad. For example:
> All the cut contracts and purported savings were triumphantly (if at times misleadingly and inaccurately) itemized on a new DOGE.gov website.
Yeah, they lied openly and brazenly in those numbers. They were not "at times misleading and inaccurate", that is making it sound much better then it was.
Imagine politico would try to report on it fairly and accurately instead of playing the "how can I make these people sound as good as possible while not lying too much" game.
That's because politico reports on politics from an "inside baseball" perspective. The focus is much more on the mechanics of politics and government as it happens/operates, and less so on the actual policies. To do this effectively, they need access, and so will consistently softball or smooth over things.
As they say right at the start of their "About Us", "POLITICO illuminates the forces shaping global power".
This ia beyond insiders baseball. You can do insiders baseball without going out of your way to whitewash as much.They dont just softball. They defend and literally go out of their way to imply false things - all to protect republicans.
They are not illuminating powers. They are obscuring uncomfortable acts and behavior or republican party.
It is very much one sided defense too.
> After Musk bought Twitter, Davis and his wife, Nicole Hollander, slept in the San Francisco headquarters of the Twitter office with their one-month-old child while they helped Musk cut the social media company to the bone. Once, according to a Musk biographer, they spent a Christmas Eve helping Musk move data servers.
From the linked Politico story.
This is just sad. I cannot begin to understand what motivates someone to do this. Sending people to the moon, curing cancer, sure. But sacrificing so much to fire people from a social media company?
> This is just sad. I cannot begin to understand what motivates someone to do this
money
I think the figure Musk circulated was that it was losing $4M / day. Although that probably includes the interest bill on the debt used for financing and might be inflated.
This is just wishful thinking. Unfortunately the damage they came to do has been done and without an act of the legislature (less likely than an act of god) the damage will stay done.
https://archive.is/Eimq0
Seems like a non-story, why wouldn't trump simply pardon them? These would be some of the more obvious pardons to hand out, and there's clearly no longer a precedent by either party to hand out pardons sparingly.
why would he? he had a hand distance from doge, and now his friend is no more. do the doge employees have dirt on DJT - unlikely.
a big round of pardons may come before new elections, it actually may be in 10K numbers, autopen'd.
They can’t afford Trump’s pardons. You don’t just give something like that away for free. Art of the deal.
trump respects loyalty maybe even more than money. none of J6 rioters/murderers who were pardoned went to mar-a-largo with an envelope or thumb drive
Surely you didn't do anything ILLEGAL, right DOGE employees?
We didn't call them useful idiots for no reason. Naive idealists make great foot soldiers, but their reward is to be ultimately expendable. When all of the damage from "DOGE" gets perceived as politically inconvenient, the narrative will morph into something like these were cowboys doing unauthorized things at Musk's behest, not directed or approved by Dear Leader.
It's understandable how they would think otherwise because Musk fell for the same shit (first time Republican supporter didn't realize the cries about the debt are pure kayfabe, lol). But the thing Musk has is the means to insulate himself from the (direct) fallout.
> the narrative will morph into something like these were cowboys doing unauthorized things at Musk's behest
They just knowingly broke the law. They are not saying "omg, I thought I am doing fully legal thing". They are saying "omg, the mafia boss does not have interest or power to protect me anymore after I broke the law for him". And they are saying it very very literally:
> the man who had a direct line to Trump, who they believed could pick up the phone and secure a presidential pardon if the worst came.
This is not about "narrative changing". This is them working for crime boss, knowingly and now finding out crime boss does not care anymore.
I was making that point in the context of the Trump Cinematic Universe, which includes both these committed true-believers as well as the clueless cheerleaders still simping along at home.
The narrative there is/was that since Trump won the election, anything he decrees has a mandate from "the people" (cue Bane voice). So when the useful idiots were acting, they saw the law as irrelevant - everything they were doing was for the cause and thus they'd be protected (naive).
But obviously Trump's directly-harmful America-last policies are eventually going to be felt by a lot of the grassroots cheerleaders who think he's some kind of savior. At which point to try and maintain their support, it's going to become politically important to write off the harmful results by attributing them to some scapegoats. And the clear scapegoats for many things are Musk and his merry band of governmental arsonists.
Do the crime, do the time.
Sorry for being so cynical, but that's just wishful thinking these days.
We are taking about an American nomenklatura. We are talking about neofeudalism.
If these employees knowingly performed illegal acts, but believed that being close to Musk/Trump meant that they wouldn't face the music, then what kind of law enforcement/justice is there remaining in the U.S.?
It's also galling as it seems to be the opposite of the Nuremberg defense - employees can knowingly do illegal acts as long as their boss/commander wants them to. A complete lack of personal responsibility.
> If these employees knowingly performed illegal acts, but believed that being close to Musk/Trump meant that they wouldn't face the music, then what kind of law enforcement/justice is there remaining in the U.S.?
If Trump actually pardons them, and their crimes were exclusively federal, then none (barring something like a Constitutional amendment invalidating pardons, or providing a mechanism to do so, which seems quite improbable.)
If Trump doesn't pardon them, or any state crimes were committed, then potentially some (though, for federal crimes, unless the Trump Justice Department actively prosecutes them, which seems improbable even in the absence of a pardon, that requires the crime have a sufficiently long statute of limitations to be prosecutable in a subsequent administration, and even if that is in 2029 there is only a short window for most federal crimes, which have a five year statute of limitations, and I would suspect there is going to be a big investigative and prosecutorial backlog to address at that time.)
DOGE employees did nothing illegal, name what crime was committed?
They were the result of the democratic process the left claims we need to protect. Trump ran on cutting waste and fraud and corruption in government and DOGE was intended to do that.
Just off the top of my head:
* Illegally firing federal employees
* Canceling government contracts without authority
* Grossly violating privacy laws by accessing sensitive federal data
Those are just the things they've boasted about. I shudder to think what further crimes they've committed behind closed doors.
firing: its hard to sue a fed employee for doing their job. and its on the plaintiff to prove that firing was not a part of their responsibilities.
(there were cases of DOGE lying + access to protected data, idk if plaintiffs can prove personal responsibilities tho, maybe some)
Federal employees are supposed to follow the law. "It was my job to break the law" is not a thing.
Unless you are the police, those do not have to follow the law. But these guys were not cops.