it was reported a few weeks ago by slate that musk's key men were not staying at doge.
trump pretending to fire them would be useless.

Sure, but those aren't the ones I'm talking about. There are a lot of DOGE folks that were also special governmental employees, like Musk, and therefore were limited to a 130-day term of employment. You can't keep an outside job or have certain types of other activities while working for the federal government as a permanent employee, so they were always short-timers. They all have to go out the door.

However, there were a few DOGE folks that were named to permanent positions in the government - including "Big Balls" himself.

wired.com - Big balls young doge converted into full time government employees

If those folks are axed, the ones who switched to full-time status, you'll know that it will be intentional and that Trump's team doesn't expect this rift to be healed. No, that's not "real damage" to Musk - but it's the likely first concrete act that the Administration would take to effectuate the split, rather than letting it still be just a war of words.