In a historic and embarrassing first, an previous Reddit meme could turn into an precise authorities company in Donald Trump‘s second time period as president, due to Elon Musk. Months earlier than Trump’s reelection, the Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor was riffing on X (previously Twitter) a few doable administration function in one thing he known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. On Tuesday, the president-elect introduced he was making that dream a actuality, appointing Musk, together with businessman and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to guide an agency of that very name, which might “pave the approach for my Administration to dismantle Authorities Forms.”
With that motion, Trump turned a greater than decade-old meme right into a weird and powerfully consequential actuality for U.S. politics.
By web requirements, “doge” is an historical artifact. In 2013, pictures of Kabosu, a feminine Shiba Inu owned by a Japanese kindergarten instructor, started going viral on Reddit, sometimes with rainbow Comedian Sans textual content that advised the interior monologue of the canine — or “doge,” as a playful misspelling had it.
A cryptocurrency is born
That very same yr, two software program designers had the thought to parody bitcoin, then gaining traction as the first decentralized cryptocurrency, with a joke coin that will function the doge meme as its emblem: Dogecoin, with the market code DOGE. Regardless of their satirical intentions, the forex discovered a devoted neighborhood, which outlived the recognition of the cutesy meme itself, though it lengthy traded at nicely underneath a cent. Nonetheless, the crypto bubble of 2017-2018 noticed a surge in buying and selling and drove the worth of the coin to a brand new peak, and by 2019, Musk himself was tweeting about it. “Dogecoin may be my fav cryptocurrency,” he posted that April. “It’s fairly cool.”
From that time ahead, Dogecoin’s fluctuations have been unmistakably entangled with Musk’s feedback on it. He holds an unspecified quantity of the cryptocurrency — with some even speculating that he’s a “whale” who has purchased up an enormous proportion of the complete cash in circulation — and routinely interacts with its most important promoters on-line. The summer season of 2020 noticed one other DOGE shopping for spree, inspired by TikTok hype, however the coin actually exploded throughout the GameStop “meme stock” craze of January 2021. Inspired by tweets and memes from Musk (in addition to Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons), traders pushed it to a brand new excessive of $0.08 that February. Musk declared it “the folks’s crypto.”
It continued to surge by means of April and hit an all-time excessive of $0.74 in Could 2021, when Musk hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and hawked the currency on Weekend Replace — whereas admitting that crypto was a “hustle.” The value of Dogecoin fell considerably throughout and after the present. The identical week, Musk introduced that SpaceX would fund a moon mission fully with Dogecoin. (That launch has been indefinitely delayed.) Musk continued to spam Twitter with Dogecoin memes and inane posts associated to the forex, as soon as typing out the lyrics to the kids’s tune “Baby Shark” as “Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.” He additionally indicated that he had purchased some DOGE for his younger son, X Æ A-Xii, and hinted that Tesla may begin accepting the currency — it will definitely did, although just for merchandise, and the possibility was later discontinued. Tesla has but to simply accept cost for a automotive in Dogecoin.
After Dogecoin fell again to earth, hitting $0.07 in June 2022, Musk confronted a lawsuit for $258 billion from traders who accused him of orchestrating a pyramid scheme by manipulating the value together with his tweets, public feedback, and the SNL look, arguing that these all contributed to a 36,000 % improve in value earlier than the crash. This criticism was amended several times in the following years to account for different Musk stunts — together with the time in April 2023, when, as the new proprietor of Twitter, he briefly modified the web site’s hen emblem to the most acknowledged picture of the “doge” Shiba Inu. That little joke despatched Dogecoin 30 percent higher. In August 2024, a choose lastly dismissed the traders’ swimsuit, calling Musk’s help of the meme coin “aspirational” slightly than “factual.”
Elon pivots to Trump
By August, Musk was pumping millions of dollars right into a Tremendous PAC with the aim of electing Trump and attaining larger affect in Washington. He occurred to be aligned with main crypto evangelists, who backed Trump in the perception that he would loosen regulations on the industry. It was at this crucial level in the marketing campaign {that a} Dogecoin fanatic advised on X that Musk’s function underneath a Trump administration must be in the “Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE).” Musk replied, “That’s the excellent identify.”
It seems the Trump crew agreed, or at the least acquiesced to the request as they started preparations to imagine the White Home. Following the election, Dogecoin predictably spiked once more — together with different crypto belongings — climbing from $0.15 earlier than Trump’s win to as excessive as $0.44 when the DOGE company grew to become official on Tuesday morning. Musk has expressed his personal enthusiasm about the “merch” DOGE will promote and vowed: “All actions of the Division of Authorities Effectivity can be posted on-line for optimum transparency.” Given his document of broken promises, this one appears unlikely to be fulfilled. Musk beforehand declared that main modifications to the X platform would always be voted on by customers, solely to eliminate such polls and push no matter updates he needed.
The silliness of the doge meme, and the cult cryptocurrency it spawned, belies the potential injury Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity may wreak on the political infrastructure of the U.S. Musk has spoken publicly about desirous to massively slash federal spending, admitting this is able to “involve some temporary hardship.”
Whereas some observers have advised that Trump is giving Musk a meaningless fee — or busywork that he can not screw up — the world’s richest man has been taking part in key meetings and diplomatic phone calls alongside Trump since Election Day. And if Republicans have been to attempt to enact, say, main cuts to social applications, like Social Safety, it may assist them politically to depend on suggestions from a physique or fee like this one.
Musk’s doable future in the authorities
Then there’s the possiblity that, if Musk helms this division as an outdoor fee as a substitute of an official authorities company, he can possible keep away from divesting from his varied firms, which have vital authorities contracts and are additionally going through regulatory scrutiny on many fronts. By taking up this function, he can be free to protect, shield, and enhance his company pursuits, doubtlessly by hobbling the federal businesses probing his companies. The Division of Justice, for instance, has spent the past two years investigating Tesla’s doubtful claims about its “Full-Self Driving” know-how. Between his DOGE job and a probable ally in prospective Attorney General Matt Gaetz, Musk could also be ready to make this pricey headache go away.
All of which makes for a wierd and alarming new section of the “doge” phenomenon. As soon as a innocent picture celebrating our love of cute furry associates, it’s now the face of an impending assault on the authorities establishments that implement monetary and labor legal guidelines, maintain our meals and consuming water secure, handle the U.S. schooling system and preserve pure sources. This, in flip, is spurring a cryptocurrency increase that would price traders tens of 1000’s of {dollars} if it turns into one other bubble. It doesn’t appear honest {that a} beloved Shiba Inu ought to come to signify such political and financial dysfunction, however when Musk wrests management of one thing — whether or not an organization, a presidential marketing campaign, or a meme — he doesn’t usually let go.
