Last year’s election came with a Greek chorus: rampant speculation about what a second Trump term might actually look like. Would it be a leaky ship once again? Would a team of loyalists turn it into the well-oiled machine Trump boasted of at the time, but whose true lubrication was debatable? Or would it be more like the dystopia that Trump’s harshest critics warned about?

If the first 10 days are any indication, what Trump’s second administration most closely resembles is . . . Twitter just after Elon Musk took it over.

Ever since Trump first announced the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) last November, it was clear the Tesla impresario would play a role in Trump’s second term. Musk contributed over $250 million to Trump’s campaign and boosted the candidate in other ways.

Now he would have a seat at the table.

Or that’s how it looked on paper, anyway. In practice, Musk appears to now occupy several seats. His influence has been unmistakable in the rocky early days of the new administration, and many of its familiar messes.

A grinning Musk famously barged into the Twitter offices in October 2022 carrying a kitchen sink—a punny nod to the meme “let that sink in.” Days later, he laid off roughly half the staff.   

Although Trump’s return to the White House was thankfully devoid of any visual puns, it has a similarly disruptive focus on efficiency. At least 240 employees of the federal government have reportedly already been fired, reassigned, or designated to be laid off so far.

And just as Musk offered Twitter workers in 2022, Trump’s administration on Tuesday presented two million government employees with what seemed to be a buyout option: eight months’ pay now, if they resign by next week. (Details of the

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