By Steve Benen
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, Elon Musk conceded, “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect.” As it turns out, the word “some” was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
For example, the quasi-governmental operation called the Department of Government Efficiency is starting at least to try to document some of its work. To that end, DOGE claimed this week that it has saved American taxpayers $55 billion in federal spending so far, which sounds like a considerable sum.
But as Bloomberg News reported, according to the accounting available through the DOGE website, the actual total is $16.6 billion, which is roughly a third of the advertised total.
Still, $16.6 billion might strike some as a significant figure! But roughly half of that total is the result of an apparently careless mistake. The New York Times reported:
“Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion.”
“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect” might as well be the title of an upcoming book on Musk’s White House tenure.
Obviously, we’re talking about people, and people make mistakes. What’s more, we’re talking about a DOGE operation filled with officials who have little background in auditing, federal expenditures and/or how government agencies actually function, making errors even more likely.
But the White House has long billed the DOGE endeavor as a hyper-competent initiative, led by private sector giants who’ll show rascally bureaucrats what mighty Silicon Valley executives can do.
Roughly a month into that endeavor, however, the American public has an overwhelming list of reasons not to take any DOGE claims at face value. They’ve gotten claims about the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) wrong. And claims about Social Security wrong. And claims about the child tax credit wrong. And claims about news organizations wrong.
And now DOGE officials apparently flubbed the difference between $8 million and $8 billion. (They were only off by a factor of 1,000.)
Common sense might suggest that Musk, Trump and their colleagues would feel a degree of embarrassment after cultivating a record like this — perhaps even demonstrate some humility going forward. That clearly isn’t happening.
As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump summarized, “Instead of then realizing the gaps in that knowledge and tempering future comments, Musk builds a defensive position around his claims, constructed of partisan tropes and attacks on his critics. It unfairly reinforces skepticism in the government. But that’s entirely the point.”
Indeed, while I’m obviously not in a position to read anyone’s mind, the underlying question about motivations is highly relevant. Are Musk and DOGE making mistakes because they don’t know what they’re doing, or are Musk and DOGE engaged in mis- and disinformation campaigns intended to deceive the public?
Credit: MSNBC
