Elon Musk Is Faking It

The fraudster who cried “fraud”

Did you hear the one about how USAID spent $50 million — or was it $100 million? — providing condoms to Hamas? This claim played a big role in the public relations campaign to rationalize the sudden, illegal dismantling of an agency that provides humanitarian aid to millions of people, and is also a key element of US foreign policy.

Reporters were puzzled by the claim because there didn’t appear to be any evidence. You will be happy to know that the mystery has been solved. Some DOGE staffers noticed that USAID had disbursed grants to local groups trying to limit the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Gaza. But they didn’t read far enough in to learn that the Gaza in question isn’t the war-ravaged strip; it’s a province in the African nation of Mozambique. Oh well, southern Africa, the Middle East, what’s the difference to the Muskenjugend?

Elon Musk actually admitted the mistake, albeit with minimal grace, during his extraordinary Oval Office press conference with President Trump on Tuesday. (Trump hasn’t acknowledged error.) That conference consisted mainly of Musk pacing around, declaiming, while Trump sat passively at his desk, occasionally expressing agreement. Musk behaved as if he were the actual president and Trump merely a heavily made-up prop.

Anyway, the incident demonstrated the level of care and understanding that DOGE is bringing to its alleged mission of identifying waste, fraud and abuse.

But both Trump and Musk insisted that DOGE has already found billions, maybe tens of billions, of waste and fraud. Here’s a complete list of the specific examples Musk gave during the press conference:

That’s right: Musk has yet to offer any specific examples of government waste. The closest Musk came to specifics was his assertion that DOGE had done

just cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. So that's a case where I think they're probably dead.

Is this true? Can we have some names please? It wouldn’t be a violation of privacy if the people are already dead.

Actually, my personal experience suggests that this story is likely to be false. Someone once tried to impersonate me and collect Social Security payments in my name. The Social Security Administration contacted me, saying that they couldn’t verify my address. So I think SSA would quickly question the identity of an 150-year-old recipient.

Now, we know that there’s huge waste in Medicare, in the form of overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans. Through Medicare Advantage insurance companies have been gaming the system; the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission estimates the annual loss to taxpayers at more than $80 billion, that is, roughly twice USAID’s budget. Oddly, however, this clear example of gigantic fraud isn’t on Musk’s radar.

But back to that Oval Office scene. Musk also asserted that

there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is what happened at USAID

Is this true? What are these peoples’ stories, if they exist? Sorry, Elon, but why should we believe you when the obvious explanation is that you are taking us for fools?

Of course, given that there are 2 million federal workers, there must be somebody out there who committed fraud. But there’s no reason to think that the waste is significant.

For those of us who have been around for a while, Musk’s evidence-free claims of fraud by federal employees bring back memories of Ronald Reagan’s ranting about welfare queens driving Cadillacs — rants that appear to have had their origin in the story of a single lifelong con artist who was in no way representative of the millions of mothers receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

Yet Reagan’s rant came after AFDC enrollment grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast, Musk’s vendetta has been launched against a federal work force that has been more or less flat for many decades, and has declined drastically relative to the size of the population it serves:

Source: FRED

So why is Musk obsessed with reducing the federal headcount? Is he just ignorant of the basic facts? Or is all the talk about efficiency cover for a purge intended to replace professional civil servants with political loyalists? Both, if you ask me.

I am, however, sure that Musk knows that DOGE’s efforts to find waste and fraud have come up empty. If he had anything real to talk about, he would.

Whether Trump realizes that Musk is faking it is less clear. But as Tuesday’s event showed, it’s not clear whether Trump matters at this point.

In any case, Musk imagines that he can con the American people, that he can keep his racket going by talking fast and throwing around what sound like big numbers, even as people are dying.

And I wish I were sure that he’s wrong.

MUSICAL CODA