President-elect Donald Trump has announced that the “Great Elon Musk,” who has zero experience running anything in the government, and “anti-woke” Big Pharma shill Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE.
It doesn’t take much to realize that the entire debacle is meant to poke fun at government bureaucracy. The acronym of the project, DOGE, is a reference to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which literally started out as a joke. Musk has been obsessed with the cringeworthy crypto scheme for many years now.
In 2021, Musk told paparazzi that “Dogecoin was invented as a joke, as essentially to make fun of cryptocurrency.”
“I think there’s an argument that the most entertaining outcome is the most like ‘what would be the most ironic outcome?'” he added at the time.
But over the last three years, the stakes have risen exponentially, with the United States federal government now being placed on the chopping block by Trump’s far-right agenda.
“I am willing to serve,” Musk wrote in a tongue-in-cheek X-formerly-Twitter post back in August, sharing an AI-generated image of himself standing behind a podium adorned with the letters “DOGE.”
In a vapid and characteristically boisterous statement shared on X, Trump said the new department will “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”
It also remains unclear why Musk can’t lead such a department on his own, instead of with hand-holding by Ramaswamy. Putting two leaders in charge of essentially the same thing, after all, doesn’t exactly scream government efficiency.
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” the statement reads, suggesting that Musk and Ramaswamy will figuratively detonate a nuclear warhead from within the Trump administration — which could have devastating effects on the lives of Americans, including those who voted for Trump.
But beyond the bluster about Musk, who most recently ran a $44 billion media company into the ground by scaring off advertisers with his belligerent racism, we still don’t know much about what exactly the department will actually do.
Trump vowed that “Elon and Vivek” will “drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion Dollars [sic] of government spending,” something that will allegedly make “life better for all Americans.”
But considering a mountain of evidence — and ignoring the fact that the US has spent $6.75 billion in 2024, not $6.5 billion — extremist fiscal conservatism has historically led to the exact opposite. Case in point, the Trump-like populist president of Argentina, Javier Milei, made massive budget cuts earlier this year as well, which sent poverty rates soaring to an astonishing 53 percent over the first six months of his tenure.
Milei’s extremist libertarianism has also sent inflation rocketing to 240 percent. Trump’s bull-in-the-China-shop approach could similarly lead to inflation soaring, experts have warned, despite promising to do the opposite.
In short, by July 4, 2026, when the United States turns 250, Trump claims that the country will have a “smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy.”
Whether that will be anything to celebrate remains to be seen.
Musk has vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” off the nation’s budget, promising to “get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook,” during a recent rally in New York City.
But economists have plenty of doubts whether that’s even possible to begin with, as CNN reports.
What’s far more likely is that Musk and Ramaswamy will use the opportunity to line their own pockets while Medicare and Social Security crumble from neglect, a conflict of interest of staggering proportions.
“Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack in his new ‘czar’ position,” said Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert in a statement. “This is the ultimate corporate corruption.”
“If anyone had any doubts whether the Trump government aims to serve regular people or the billionaires, they should now be resolved,” she added.
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