Yes, it’s true—DOGE “doesn’t exist” anymore. But we would never dream of letting it evaporate without an exit interview. DOGE: It’s your turn to send us a pointless, time-consuming email explaining what exactly it was that you did here.
Dear America,
How to begin to recount our monumental achievements? Never have so few done so much to so many.
A few highlights …
We were willing to be vulnerable. Shared vulnerability brings people together, and by that metric, millions of Americans are now closer than when we started. What we are trying to say is, we uploaded Social Security data to the cloud in a worrisomely insecure way, as one whistleblower noted. Now we’re all at risk!
We tried new things. The Institute of Peace briefly became a battlefield. (An exciting pivot!)
We took risks. Cuts to the U.S. Forest Service made our national forests more dangerous and dirtier. We have increased the likelihood of devastating wildfires and also hacked away at the forces that fight them. What can we say? Some men love to watch the world burn, and we are some men. We have also made it easier for hurricanes to sneak up on us, to add another thrilling element of danger to the lives of average Americans. We have long felt that in the battle of Man versus Nature, Man had an unfair advantage.
We kept some things consistent. Most people would agree that government inefficiencies exist and that someone should tackle them. And after DOGE, people feel that only more strongly. Before DOGE, systems meant to serve millions of people were being run by a few harried employees using outdated systems. And now, after DOGE, they are being run by even fewer, even more harried employees on those same outdated systems! The power of DOGE: to alienate even Leland Dudek, a man who started out eager to invite drastic change into the Social Security Administration.
We turned things around, scientifically. Thanks to our tireless efforts, we are on track to soon be No. 2 in science in the world! People thought they wouldn’t see American scientific dominance destroyed in their lifetime, but that just shows their failure of imagination. Have you seen U.S. scientists these days? The ones who have not already fled to Europe? Do you see how twitchy they are? They don’t know if they’ve got funding or not, because we misread their grant application and thought that it had something to do with Woke; they don’t know if their labs will exist in a year; they don’t know if they’ll even be able to get into the buildings where they work. This is by design. Without mad scientists, how can we ever hope to lead the world in production of Frankenstein Monsters, genetically reengineered T. rexes, and moon-shrinking lasers? Our scientists are now madder than they’ve ever been, and that’s entirely thanks to DOGE.
We grew exponentially. We have increased waste and inefficiency to never-before-seen levels! Five hundred tons of lifesaving food incinerated—at a cost of thousands of dollars.
We changed lives. We have transformed the lives of thousands, in the sense that we have made those lives needlessly and unforgivably shorter. Thanks to the shutdown of USAID, hundreds of thousands of people are now dead.
We did something with billions of dollars! The best part was all the savings. Were there savings? Every time we announced a number of dollars that our efforts had saved, it turned out that that number was wrong. This gave everyone the opportunity to do math. Which is good to practice, because the Department of Education is gone now. Much of it is being rolled into Labor, streamlining the journey from cradle to assembly line—and hopefully quickly, so we can take advantage of those tiny fingers!
We created lawsuits! Don’t worry! In addition to not saving money, we also cost people money. We did everything in such a way as to multiply the number of lawsuits at an astounding rate. Dealing with lawsuits is an incredibly efficient way to spend taxpayer dollars, because you pay millions of dollars and get … motions and counter-motions, something all Americans can use at home and much prefer to listeria-free lettuce.
Mission accomplished, I say! Always a good sign when a team of innovators destroys billions of dollars of value and then vanishes into thin air! The Louvre burglars could learn a thing or two.
So few people, touching so many lives so profoundly. Next time we’ll try to have a positive impact.
The post A DOGE Exit Interview appeared first on The Atlantic.




