I'm not particularly a DOGE fan myself but I've seen many folks like the above able to do great amounts of "cleanup" in organizations of 100k+ employees without much broken glass. Plenty who don't as well and create a mess of course... but those are not usually the ones who introduce themselves by way of being concerned about the effects and rate of change.
Just as not every person who is hesitant to remove things is just a curmudgeon, freeloader, fake worker, lazy, or whatever else people like to characterize them as it's also true not every person who wants to remove cruft is ignorant, clueless, wreckless, royally screws things up, and so on. In both cases success is more tied with those focusing on the details of the execution rather than personal feelings.
I will add one thing separately from that though: In a large enough organization there are always stalwarts to or against status quo so those who appear to soften or loosen over time often build that into their plans. Of course there are always truly clueless ones who drastically adjust their worldview after a single failure... but that's certainly not every scenario one should expect to see :).
I've NEVER ever ever seen anyone who comes in with this attitude do it effectively in practice. They always either soften greatly or screw things up.