President Donald Trump has elevated DOGE to the center of his domestic agenda, channeling significant political capital into defending it, and its architect Elon Musk, from critics in Congress — and his own Cabinet.
Political Risks and Priorities
But ahead of his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, a dozen of the president’s allies, Trump-aligned GOP strategists and former administration officials are warning that Trump going all-in on the Muskian effort is a risky gamble that threatens to overshadow his more popular, and politically crucial, economic and legislative priorities.
While polling shows bipartisan support for cutting federal spending, some Trump allies are quietly skeptical about whether the Department of Government Efficiency will succeed, and are privately wincing at what they view as a callous and inhumane approach that Musk is taking to slashing government workers’ jobs. They also fear that too much emphasis on DOGE and not enough on the economy, or even immigration, stands to reenergize Democrats ahead of the midterms and sideline more moderate Trump voters. And they worry it is distracting from the president’s plan to pass a tax and immigration bill using Congress’ budget reconciliation process, which they see as a political make-or-break moment and key to Trump’s legacy.
“If you’re Trump, one of the strategic questions is: ‘DOGE is getting all the attention. I’m doing all this important work on other issues, is that OK?’ Or do you want to see the other issues get more attention?” said Scott Jennings, a GOP strategist who has been a vocal Trump defender on CNN and who was at one point considered for Trump’s press secretary post.
Public Perception vs. Policy Focus
In public, Trump has spent far more time defending DOGE — a concept that didn’t even exist until mid-November — than he has weighing in on reconciliation, which he has largely left to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.). During his first Cabinet meeting last week, which was televised, Trump cajoled his secretaries into giving Musk a round of applause. It was a far more public, and proactive gesture to ensure his top lieutenants are on Team DOGE than his last-minute, behind-the-scenes efforts to bring several Republican holdouts on Team Big Beautiful Bill, the strategy the House is using to try to pass the president’s legislative agenda.
The contrast reflects the president’s priority on achieving immediate, visible results — and his disdain for the slower and more cumbersome congressional processes that can achieve more lasting changes.
Media Influence and Public Opinion
And for as much as Republicans blame the mainstream media for its fixation on DOGE, some of them say they also can’t blame them: Musk is a singular figure, and coupled with Trump, they’re hard to ignore. They are, after all, essentially unilaterally remaking the American government.
“Do I think that Elon soaks up a lot of oxygen? Yes. Do I think the combination of Elon and Trump is catnip for the media at large, and the way that stories get covered, 100 percent, and I think that’s because both guys provoke a lot of reaction, both positive and negative,” said Clay Travis, founder of OutKick, the conservative, pro-Trump website that offers sports and political commentary. “And when you put them together, it’s kind of unprecedented.”
Challenges and Concerns
A senior White House official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, argued DOGE is “part of a larger story” of the administration’s agenda. The official declined to offer specifics on what the president’s Tuesday night speech will say, adding only that it will “showcase the president’s vision for the country” and “the wins so far.”
Musk has so far appeared to take much of the fire for the president on DOGE. The latest Harvard-Harris poll pegs Trump at a 52 percent approval rating, to Musk’s 44 percent. But some swing state GOP operatives, who say they support the president and want to see him succeed, are already troubled by how the administration’s message is resonating with everyday Americans.
They see some of the administration’s more memorable moments from the last week or so as geared toward the base of conservatives who spend their time online — Musk on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference with a chainsaw in a “Dark MAGA” hat, the White House sparring with The Associated Press over it’s refusal to rename the Gulf of Mexico, and conservative influencers posing with Jeffrey Epstein binders. Some worry they will run into the same trap that has at times consumed Democrats — being too online.
Public Perception and Economic Realities
“When all you’re doing is throwing red meat to the Twitter crowd, that’s what’s getting reported on the nightly news, and that’s what people are reading, they’re like, ‘What the hell are you going to do about prices?’” said one GOP consultant in a swing state, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the perception outside of Washington.
The consultant said DOGE’s approach to cuts falls into a similar category, popular on X, but tone-deaf in real life.
“The bigger risk is people being like, ‘[Elon’s] a fucking asshole. Can you at least have some compassion about what these people are going through? Can you at least treat them with respect? They have mouths to feed, roofs to keep over their heads,’” the consultant added. “Yeah, it has to happen. But why does an extremely pale lion have to play with his food here?”
Public Opinion and Policy Implementation
While polling shows Americans are broadly supportive of federal cost-cutting measures — 56 percent in a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll — they’re less thrilled with Musk and the way he’s going about it. Musk’s leadership of the task force is opposed by 53 percent in the poll.
Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of respondents said they think the wealthy are making money off of their White House connections, including a majority of Republicans; more than half oppose a federal hiring freeze; and nearly two-thirds oppose shuttering the Department of Education.
Those frustrations have started to bubble over, including at GOP town halls, where angry constituents have shown up to complain about the DOGE cuts. Even Republican operatives who claim Democrats are stacking those town halls with left-wing plants still heed them as warning signs.
Public Perception and Policy Impact
“Trump is absolutely addressing a significant American priority by seeking to eliminate wasteful Washington spending. They also endorse the extent of the cuts,” said longtime GOP messaging consultant Frank Luntz. “What they don’t support is the language behind those cuts. If it’s done to help hardworking taxpayers, Americans say bravo. But if it’s done out of spite or revenge, the public will not agree.”
It’s something Trump appeared to acknowledge when he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that “we take good care of our veterans” and that his administration is watching the number of veterans fired “very carefully” and “hope it’s going to be as small a number as possible.” That was followed up by the Office of Personnel Management telling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to reinstate veterans, disabled veterans and military spouses who were fired, according to a Bloomberg Law report.
“A lot of the people they’re laying off look like Trump voters. A lot of people that they’re laying off are middle-class, working-class Americans. You can find subsets of these people who are being fired who are military vets, or who are conservatives in their own communities and voted for Trump,” said a Washington-based Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about their assessment. “The more that that happens — even if it’s a minority of the people who are getting laid off — I think that’s a vulnerability.”
Policy Implementation Challenges
Even some of the president’s allies privately criticize the blunt-force nature of the cuts — including, for instance, the sacking of aviation employees, people who oversee the country’s nuclear arsenal and scientists and inspectors involved in the ongoing bird flu outbreak — and fear that it’s a matter of time before something catastrophic happens.
At the same time, Americans remain antsy about inflation and don’t feel the administration is doing enough to bring costs down. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index plummeted to a 15-month low in February, while the Reuters-Ipsos poll found that 52 percent of respondents don’t feel like Trump is doing enough to help the economy and bring down prices.
Economic Realities and Public Perception
“The single most important issue is lowering inflation and dealing with cost of living. That’s what won us the election last year, and that’s what they expect President Trump and the majorities in Congress to deal with,” said Trump pollster John McLaughlin. “They’ve got to reduce inflation and they’ve got to get the economy growing, and they’ve got this looming deadline where they would have a massive tax increase if they don’t renew the Trump tax cuts.”
Still, the president’s allies argue that he is addressing the economy with tariffs and executive orders designed to boost fossil fuel production and attract new domestic investment. Even the DOGE cuts will yield an economic benefit down the road, they argue, through improving the country’s fiscal health and boosting the private sector.
Economic Strategy and Public Perception
“The American people are a lot smarter than most Washington observers give them credit for,” said Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a longtime Trump ally. “They know that we didn’t get into this mess in a day, and you’re not going to fix it in a month.”
On the ground, those efforts may still have limited reach. Take Arizona, which this week received a multibillion commitment from Apple to manufacture chips in Phoenix, part of a larger $500 billion U.S. investment over the next four years. Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist in the state, said Trump could easily run into the problem that former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris did when they tried to convey how great passing the CHIPS Act had been for the economy. Americans didn’t feel that improvement in their wallets.
