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The only real reason to think that DOGE wasn't meant seriously was the name. DOGE as a thing made perfect sense as something he'd do. And the name isn't going to affect what it actually does, and this isn't a GIMP situation where people really have a choice to stay away because of the name, so the name is just there to thumb his nose at the media.
The reason not to take DOGE seriously was the Musk was saying all the normal things that people who are not serious about spending cuts say, including starting with foreign aid, using headcount reductions as a proxy for spending reductions, talking about waste/fraud/abuse without specifics, and insisting that there is a lot more fraud in simple well-run programmes like Social Security than there actually is.
Most US federal government spending is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, debt interest, and the military. Medicaid is mostly block-granted to the states. Social Security and debt interest are about cutting checks to people who are legally entitled to them, so levels of waste and fraud are very low. So if you are talking about cutting waste/fraud/abuse without talking about Medicare or the military, I am going to think you are a bullshitter.
I think this is missing the point. If you want to make massive cuts you need to tackle entitlements. But if you just want to bend the cost curve whilst removing growth killing regulations, you need to tackle things like what DOGE is doing.
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