Rachel Maddow found what she called a fitting “metaphor” for Elon Musk’s work with the federal government.
The MSNBC host devoted a segment on Monday to the Department of Government Efficiency’s takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in Washington, D.C. After a judge ruled the takeover illegal last month, USIP staff reportedly returned to find the building in disrepair, complete with water leaks, damaged property, and evidence of rodents and cockroaches.
According to a report in The Economist, when cleaners re-entered the building they also found marijuana that had apparently been thrown out by DOGE staffers.
Maddow said the fiasco summed up DOGE’s activities.
“So, maximum destruction, leaving everything soiled and in disrepair and littered with drugs, and now, because all of that was totally illegal, the folks at the U.S. Institute of Peace will have to, like, repair everything and stand everything back up in order to even start to get back to where they were before this whole thing started,” she said on The Rachel Maddow Show.
On his last day as a “special government employee” on Friday, Musk turned up to the White House with a black eye, which some in the media called a metaphor for his battered public image. But Maddow said her example was more “on the nose.”
“It’s just pure pointlessness and waste,” she said. “Yes, the black eye was cute, but may I suggest that this is perhaps more on the nose as the legacy of what the Trump administration has done through Trump’s top campaign donor, Elon Musk, as Elon Musk leaves Washington.”
“A building seized pointlessly. Shut down pointlessly. Left to be infested by vermin,” she went on. “All so its rightful owners can eventually come back and have to put it all back together again—for no reason at all. I think that’s a better metaphor.”
Members of the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded independent nonprofit focused on global conflict resolution, were abruptly dismissed in March after President Donald Trump targeted it in his and Musk’s heavy-handed effort to slash federal spending.
DOGE officials took over the building and most of the institute’s employees were subsequently laid off.
The organization’s leadership sued, and U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled last month that the think tank had been taken over illegally by “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies.”
Judge Howell found that because the administration unlawfully removed USIP’s board, all actions that followed—including the dismissal of staff—were void.
Musk originally pledged to cut $2 trillion from federal spending, but fell far short. DOGE estimates it’s found $175 billion in savings—a figure that remains highly contested.
The billionaire has now stepped back from his controversial and chaotic work with the government with his businesses and reputation suffering.
