Elon Musk Pretends He's Leaving The Job He Supposedly Doesn't Have, To Not Return To The Job He Supposedly Never Left
A closer reading of Musk’s actual words shows he’s not really going anywhere. He’s just promising not to spend all his time in DC anymore. And even that comes with a rather significant caveat:
“I’ll have to continue doing it for, I think, probably the remainder of the president’s term, just to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back, which will do if it has the chance,” Musk said
Let’s talk about those savings Musk is so worried about protecting. There are basically three stories here, each more puzzling than the last.
First, there’s the story of the incredible shrinking savings target. Musk started by promising to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget right before the election. Post-election, perhaps realizing people might actually try to hold him to that ... A few weeks ago, he lowered expectations again to $150 billion. If you’re playing at home, the difference between $2 trillion and $150 billion is… just about $2 trillion.
The second story is about what’s actually being cut. Even the $150 billion is nonsense — not only has DOGE failed to demonstrate any actual waste or fraud (certainly no one’s been charged with fraud), but the programs they’re recklessly cutting are likely to cost taxpayers way more than they save.
And the third story? That’s about how DOGE counts its supposed savings. As the NY Times detailed, those numbers look to be pretty much fictional:
One of the group’s largest claims, in fact, involves canceling a contract that did not exist. Although the government says it had merely asked for proposals in that case, and had not settled on a vendor or a price, Mr. Musk’s group ignored that uncertainty and ... said it had saved exactly $318,310,328.30.
Even as the media keeps fact-checking these claims, DOGE just quietly makes random changes to its website, hoping no one notices. The NY Times caught them deleting entries that triple-counted the same savings, confused “billion” with “million”, and even claimed credit for canceling contracts that ended during the George W. Bush administration.
But the errors keep coming. Their second-biggest claimed savings? A supposedly canceled IRS contract worth $1.9 billion that was actually canceled under Biden. Their third-biggest? A $1.75 billion savings from canceling a vaccine nonprofit grant that had already been paid in full.
...And then there’s the matter of Musk’s Twitter activity, where he seems to have discovered an entirely new category of fictional math, in which he will regularly and repeatedly retweet claims that disagree with his own admission that DOGE will only save $150 billion.
The latest example? Musk enthusiastically amplifying claims about massive Social Security fraud. Here he is, just yesterday, retweeting someone claiming $12.6 billion in monthly savings from supposedly removing “7 million scammers” from the system:
There are several problems here. The first, as Wired detailed, is that not a single part of this claim is true.
The Social Security Administration has long had systems to prevent payments to deceased beneficiaries, including (but certainly not limited to) their automated processes to stop anyone over 115 from receiving any payments at all. Which means, rather awkwardly for Musk’s claims, none of these supposedly fraudulent recipients were actually receiving any money to begin with, and even if they were cut from the system, the savings would be $0.
There’s a pattern here that goes beyond just bad math. Musk leads DOGE while government lawyers swear under oath that he doesn’t.
He’s supposedly running Tesla while spending his time dismantling the federal government. He claims massive savings that don’t actually exist.
He retweets numbers that directly contradict the numbers he personally announced just days earlier.
The whole thing feels like it should collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. But it doesn’t, because it was never meant to make sense. It’s basically all kayfabe ... theatrical fakery where the audience chooses to believe despite knowing better.
The difference is that unlike wrestling, where the fakery is harmless entertainment, this performance is actively destroying what had been the most amazing democracy and economy on the planet.
More Musk/DOGE lies at https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/24/elon-musk-pretends-hes-leaving-the-job-he-supposedly-doesnt-have-to-not-return-to-the-job-he-supposedly-never-left/
= new reply since forum marked as read
