DOGE was absolute nonsense from top to bottom. I was convinced it was purely a scam, but some exit interviews seem to indicate they really believed their own hype. Musk saying they'd find $1-2T in savings just by looking at stuff with AI was preposterous. And they brought in a squad of pathologically optimistic kids who believed him. They were so grossly inexperienced and irrational that they really thought they could put budgets into a spreadsheet type "Find the fraud" into ChatGPT and find anything useful and were surprised when they didn't. Then they repeatedly lied about their progress. You can't expect any level of operational sophistication or political savvy from a team that inept.