The liberal media is truly giving itself fits over Elon Musk and his new position within the Trump administration, which is to helm the Department of Government Efficiency, which is uprooting the waste and fraud that’s infested Washington DC. Liberals have slowly replaced Trump derangement syndrome with Musk madness since the 2024 election. Ironically, Musk was recently an Andrew Yang Democrat.
The $50 million worth of condoms were being sent to Mozambique, not Gaza, so everyone calm down ok?
— Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) February 12, 2025
DOGE has shut down USAID and is combing through every crack and crevice looking for government waste, which it has done by using AI to analyze the expenditures of these agencies rapidly. The Left is mad because all their slush fund vehicles are being pinched off. At the Oval Office yesterday, Elon Musk, his son, and Donald Trump took questions from the media as the president signed an order enhancing compliance between government agencies and DOGE, and The New York Times had a predictable headline for the occasion: “Musk Asserts Without Proof That He’s Fixing a Bureaucracy Rife With Fraud.”
The billionaire Elon Musk said in an extraordinary Oval Office appearance on Tuesday that he was providing maximum transparency in his government cost-cutting initiative, but offered no evidence for his sweeping claims that the federal bureaucracy had been corrupted by cheats and officials who had approved money for “fraudsters.”
Answering questions from the media for the first time since his arrival in Washington to run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Mr. Musk stood next to the Resolute Desk and asserted that his work was in the interest of the public and democracy. President Trump sat behind the desk, chiming in with approval as he let the world’s richest man expound for roughly 30 minutes on the rationale for the drastic overhaul of the federal bureaucracy.
The goal is to “restore democracy,” Mr. Musk said. “If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?”
Among Mr. Musk’s claims, which he offered without providing evidence, was that some officials at the now-gutted U.S. Agency for International Development had been taking “kickbacks.” He said that “quite a few people” in the bureaucracy somehow had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” without explaining how he had made that assessment. He later claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks were as old as 150.
“We are actually trying to be as transparent as possible,” Mr. Musk said, referring to postings by his team on his social media site, X. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent.”
He continued, “I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”
In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and gaining access to sensitive data systems. Mr. Musk himself is a “special government employee,” which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.
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Again, you people don’t get to hurl the “without evidence” line ever again on anything concerning Trump. For years, you peddled Russian collusion nonsense with zero evidence, said Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, said Biden wouldn’t drop out, and said COVID wasn’t a lab leak. The list goes on—all these points made by the liberal media without any evidence, despite conservatives and alternate information ecosystems knowing otherwise.
Oh, and we had the evidence. On this DOGE story, so does The New York Times, which makes this “Asserts Without Proof” line about waste and fraud even more embarrassing. Independent reporter Michael Shellenberger went through the publication’s clips and got ready to be embarrassed. New York Times: the Government Accountability Office found the government lost $233-$521 billion to fraud last year. You had reported on these stories multiple times, and to the shock of no one, all of these stories dated during the first Trump presidency.
The New York Times says “Musk Asserts Without Proof That Bureaucracy Is Rife With Fraud.” Seriously? The GAO — under Biden — estimated last year that we are losing $233-$521 billion *per year* to fraud. Guys, it’s right there. Why do you continue with this… fraud? SMH pic.twitter.com/p2ceZhNLuQ
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 12, 2025
The reporter can’t decide whether to be mad that it took so long (23 days) for Musk to attend a press conference or that he spoke for so long (30 minutes!)… This is what’s known as “crazy-making” — typical Cluster B behavior. It’s Musk Derangement Syndrome. Add it to the DSM pic.twitter.com/vzFOk38zYZ
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 12, 2025
If Trump hadn’t made cutting waste fraud and abuse such a high priority you can be damn well sure the Times would be scolding him for allowing so much waste, fraud and abuse! And every single journalist at the Times knows it. https://t.co/fzK6JjJRV3
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) February 12, 2025
“The problem for the Times and the rest of the Democratic Party is that they aren’t able to object to any of the things Trump is cutting and so they demonize Musk, which is how they pleasure their audience anyway so it’s a twofer,” wrote Shellenberger.
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