Slash-and-Brurn-Tactk Musk brings to Washington often back on Twitter

When Elon Musk Bought twitter In 2022, he dismissed thousands of employees, stopped paying rent and auctioned coffee machines and office chairs in the hope of a large turn.

Now the world’s richest man has brought the same slash strategy to the federal government, and some people who experienced Musk’s takeover on Twitter Have a warning: Expect chaos, cuts driven by ideology as much as with costs, threats and lots of litigation.

Since assumes the leadership of Department of Government EfficiencyMusk has consolidated control over large cuts of government with president Donald Trump ‘s blessing, sidelined career officials, gained access to sensitive databases and invited a constitutional clash over The borders of the presidential authority.

Emily Horne, who was the leader of Twitter’s political communication, before joining the Biden administration, describes Musk’s Modus Operandi as, “Take over it, ruthlessly cleans anyone whom he sees as resistance and crash operations to re -record it in his worldview.”

It is unclear whether his push for “extremely hardcore” changes on Twitter has paid off. The revenue of the company now called X is thrown, the number of users has subsided, and even Musk itself has expressed frustration at how long it takes to turn the company’s finances.

“It doesn’t work,” said Ross Gerber, a minority therapist at X, who has written his efforts down to Zero and expects Musk not to fail in Washington. “The federal government will eat him up and spit him out.”

By some measures, X is still a success. The platform continues to attract hundreds of millions of users around the world and have cemented Musk’s political influence. But exactly how it goes financially it is difficult to say because the company is private.

The same week as musk Hold on DODE was threatening to dismiss Tens of thousands of federal workers, bankers who lent him billions of dollars to buy Twitter, were aligned with losses and tried to unload the loans on others. Musk has apparently given up hope of attracting key advertisers back to the platform and has sued some of them.

Examples of budget-minded business leaders who brought their abilities to government work, but Musk made it clear-on both Twitter and DOGE-UT HIS Priorities go beyond the effectiveness of Rolling out a “woke up” agenda.

Long before combating diversity, justice and inclusion efforts, a midpoint of Trump’s third presidential campaign eliminated Musk Twitter’s DEI initiatives and the people who administered them.

“The Twitter culture died,” said former employee Theodora Skadas, whose job was cut in the weeks after Musk bought Twitter for $ 44 billion in October 2022. “For many of these agencies and organizations that may be in their future. “

Another tactic that Musk seems to bring to the government: “Performances of loyalty.”

That’s how former Twitter -Operior Rumman Chowdhury describes Musk’s driving force to get the workers to prove the value of their work in a way she says demonstrated Fealty. For example, engineers were asked to print code and then line up to get an inexperienced engineer to evaluate it.

“It’s a fear and threat tactic,” Chowdhury said. “I don’t know if it is the best leadership style in the long term, as demonstrated by how Abysmal Twitter/X does.”

Musk tried later to restore some of the engineers He fired. His instinct to threaten back with advertisers as well.

Within months of Musk’s takeoverAdvertising revenue threw himself by half as brands fled X over fears that he loosened content moderation too much. But instead of going after the companies, Musk to X threatened to “thermonuclear name and shame” them to leave his platform. Later at a conference he used an explicit and encouraged them, “not ads.”

“Talk about shooting yourself in the foot,” said ad consultant Tom Hespos from ABYDOS MEDIA, who told her clients at the time to avoid even sending on X because it could hurt their fire. “It’s probably the worst comment he could have made.”

In August doubled musk by suing Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and several other companies that had dropped Twitter, and accused them of participating in an “illegal boycott.” On Saturday, he added several companies to the trial, including Lego, Shell International, Tyson Foods, Nestle and Colgate-Palmolive.

His Extracted legal battles With more than 2,000 former Twitter employees is also a sign of the kind of judicial matches that could await the government. A Federal Judge Thursday Put on wait A deadline for midnight the same day for government workers to accept Musk’s “postponed resignation” promising wages through September without having to work.

The e -mail who advertised the offer was titled “Fork in the Road”, which repeats a similar E -mail Musk sent to the Twitter working force in 2022.

More than two years later, Musk’s X is still using an insane amount “defends against accusations of former Twitter employees that they are due to money, said lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan, who represents hundreds of the workers. She said it would have been cheaper to just pay them what they owed.

“If that’s how decision -making for the federal government is made, I am very concerned about the federal government’s economy,” she said.

Neither X nor DOGE responded to requests for comment from Associated Press.

With Wrap the company’s workforce and Auction of memorabilia and office furniture, Musk’s extreme cost -saving strategy on Twitter included simply not paying its bills. Landlords of the social media business headquarters in San Francisco as well as its British offices took the company to court Millions of dollars in unpaid rent.

The British case settles for a unveiled sum. The San Francisco case was rejected last year; It is not clear if a solution was paid.

Musk has also brought one of XS real estate leaders to the government.

Even if the X -cuts were an unmatched success, it is unclear whether the same tactic would work to cut down on costs and still provide services in state agencies.

Nicholas Bagley, a lawyer professor at the University of Michigan, said Musk and Trump arrogate consumption power belonging to Congress, not the executive branch, and he predicts litigation over the movements will hammer their efforts.

“All this is of questionable legality, and that is before you get to the protection of public service,” Bagley said, referring to federal workforce rules that prevent dismissals for political purposes. “You want to see a lot of bombast and rhetoric, but I suspect it will give fewer things on earth.”

A couple in Musk’s trajectory has tried to warn him against moving for Rashly, including the prominent tech -investor Paul Graham, who in a recent X exchange asked Musk to “take your time and do it carefully.”

The government “is not just a company. Businesses are born and die in the system and that’s ok. But this is the system itself we are talking about here. “

Minority X Equity Owner Gerber, CEO of the investment company Gerber Kawasaki, praises Musk for involving a feeling of belonging to the “special forces in business” with his companies. But he thinks Musk will fail in Washington.

“The idea that you can shoot all these people is not working,” he said. “We are watching an epic match.”