Before he took his recent (regrettable) turn he did pour his heart and soul (and personal fortune) into SpaceX for over a decade. If it weren't for SpaceX we'd be relying on the incompetent monstrosities of Boeing or ULA.
If Elon recognized that he had the social skills of an NPC and had hired a PR team, we would probably all still adore him and likely he would still just be doing engineering company stuff.
Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.
I believe he has pretty good social skills, he managed to fly under the radar as a public figure for long enough, until he was powerful enough to no longer need to give a fuck.
He could, however, not give a fuck about whether he is liked or not, which is certainly what I would do if I had 400,000,000,000$ of fuck you money. But being what would in rude terms would be described as an "attention whore", he instead spends his time making insane tweets and pretending to be good at videogames in order to impress a bunch of adolescent boys. It's almost sad.
I don't, but I expect a powerful person to have the foresight to have not just Yes men around them and listen to advice/voices that give them counter points to what they want to blurb out before they blurb it out.
It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.
A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.
It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?
A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.
Not as sad as a world in which Billionaires actively and shamelessly use their power to rebuild the government on their favor and spread misinformation, populism and hate globally their own media platforms.
For me all he had to do was not openly be a genocidal white supremacist. Maybe he needs a crew to help him with that, but I think there's something about that that's a bit more than "poor social skills" and I'm sick of pretending that me not knowing what to say to people at funerals is the same as him delivering multiple Nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration.
Elon Musk is the head of the republican party and won the election? Or do you just ctrl+f for "white supremacist" and throw the same shit at every wall you find to see where it will stick?
The temerity of the whole TDS bullshit is the most obvious proof of an astounding lack of self-awareness on the right. Here the people obsessed with Obama around baseless internet memes for 8 years, who were clutching their pearls over Clinton having an affair, who stuck stickers of Biden on gas pumps for years, who now have latched onto "domestic terrorism" as their new favorite phrase, think dislike of Trump is some unique thing affecting just the "other team."
All you have to do is listen to Trump speak to realize he's fairly unique in quickly-obviouly-un-American ways among recent US Presidents.
It's not a lack of self-awareness, it's a purposeful muddying of the waters. It's making being angry at a nazi salute the same as being angry at a tan suit: meaningless. These people aren't stupid. You can tell because what they do works.
Not starting transition is also a life changing decision. Testosterone never stops permanently mutilating the bodies that it poisons until it's removed from the body.
> It's quiet amusingy that up ubtill recently in the usa it was easier to get surgery to turn you to your 'real' gender compared to buying yourself some alcohol.
That's not true at all. Kids can't just get surgery on their own. They need parental consent at the very least. Interestingly, one survey indicated that 97% of minors receiving breast reduction surgery were not transgender kids, but cis male kids with gynecomastia. In your hand-wringing about life-changing decisions, would you deny these boys the treatment they need and instead force them to keep their breast growth all throughout adolescence?
And it's certainly easier to get parental consent to consume alcohol than it is to get elective gender-affirming surgery. The total number of people getting GAS in the USA in one year has never exceeded ~13,000. That's for all ages. Meanwhile about 10 million young people under 21 per year drink alcohol, of whom about 10% were able to obtain it from their own home, which in some states is perfectly legal.
> I think the republican position is more nuanced than that. To summarize: 'all children are special and important but any life changing decisions like joining the army or getting a tattoo are best left for later in life.
I didn't realise republicans were against genital mutilation.
As you said they're incompetent so it would be Russia more like. Imagine the bizarre situation that the US would be in while fighting a proxy war against them at the same time.
Also in that alternative timeline, I wonder what that would do to Americans psychologically. If China and Russia had already beat the US in space, the decline would be extremely obvious. To the rest of the world as well.
ULA is not a "incompetent monstrosity" (Boeing yes sadly). The company is making good progress with Vulcan and if they were given the funds/time to design a reusable rocket they're probably one of the few companies that has the talent/experience to pull it off. Tony Bruno is maybe the only CEO of a large space company that is a hardcore engineer and has a passion for space. Would have been cool to see BO/ULA get combined under Tony's leadership but wasn't meant to be.
SpaceX is and always has been funded by NASA. Congress simply doesn't allow NASA to do its own missions any more so it's been forced to add a middle man where it pays private companies to use its technology, infrastructure, and money to do the work it wishes it could do itself
It's only regrettable through the lens of partisan politics. DOGE is undeniably a good concept.
You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything, cut wasteful spending, expose corrupt spending, and trim bureaucratic inefficiency via external oversight. It would be regrettable not to undertake the task.
Anyway, we have a Government Accounting Office already which is highly critical of waste. If anyone was earnest, they'd send them more resources.
On the other hand, if someone wanted to cripple every infrastructure, institution, and agency across the board in order to cause chaos, without transparency, accountability, and compliance, then DOGE is super effective!
The types of waste, fraud, and abuse matter as much as the scale. Even just a "little" (5%-10%) corruption is a moral stain on the whole thing.
As it is, that "small" corruption is funding an extensive network of NGOs, nonprofits run by the families of people in government, media, etc. -- all to (a) keep a ton of money flowing to people in Washington DC and (b) protect that status quo.
Politics aside, widespread corruption in the US capitol should be taken very seriously.
Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time (see JFK's comments on the CIA for one example; there are also videos of Obama and Biden trying to address it during Obama's presidency). Each time it wins again, it grows stronger and more entrenched.
Our partisan attitude is understandable: our tribal wiring seems to make us gravitate towards "us/them" thinking and to cheer when "their" side loses. But doesn't the DC bureaucracy represent a common enemy to those on either side who value democracy?
They keep saying “fraud” without proof of anything other than just spending they disagree with. Spending, I might add, which was previously duly authorized by Congress.
The use of the word “fraud” is a smoke screen. To unquestioningly accept it is to be complicit in their lies. And that’s what they’re doing: lying.
If there really is fraud, let’s see it prosecuted via due process, like it should be. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks volumes.
No one can "prove" anything without a clear goalpost that doesn't move :) That being said, there is evidence I can present from the past. Here are a couple of cases:
Also, not exactly "fraud" in the accounting sense, but there is a slew of NGOs that purport to support foreign aid, but most of the money is paid to people in DC. Only about $5B/yr actually went from USAID to directly meet needs in other countries: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/19/opinion/us-foreign-aid.ht...
Someone makes concrete allegations of massive fraud and then uses those allegations as justification for huge funding cuts. Folks ask for evidence of the fraud justifying these cuts. They are instead given evidence of the existence of some different fraud that occurred some point in the past.
If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
> uses those allegations as justification for huge funding cuts
I am personally not calling for that. What I do want is for the flow of money to this network of DC-based NGOs to get cleaned up.
Have you ever heard of a grant "poem"? That's an inside term for the fancy language that is written when an NGO or university requests funding from a US federal agency. It has to sound quasi-legitimate, even erudite. But the purpose is to secure more money, and for NGOs, the actual funds are almost entirely used to enrich the people in the NGO, and often to fund things that keep the left in power (like local protests, far-left media, "grassroots" left-wing campaign organizations, etc). Grant poems to enrich NGOs constitute fraud -- maybe not in an accounting sense, but it very much is a defrauding of the citizens who pay taxes.
Also, DOGE has so far found 14 "magic money" computers located in various agencies, including the department of the treasury. When a particular API call comes in, these computers will transfer money from nothing, essentially creating new money out of thin air. That is the worst form of fraud.
> If you don't see how problematic that is, then why not just avoid the discussion in the first place?
Because the faithlessness of the federal bureaucracy and its network of NGOs, combined with its sheer magnitude and entrenched power, is a very real problem. I guess I'm not articulate enough to engage productively with folks like yourself who inexplicably seem to think it's really great...
Modern democratic governments ought to implement the will of the people, not subvert it to enrich themselves and stay in power. Do you disagree?
---
In summary, Trump will be gone in 4 years, Elon Musk is rapidly losing his money and influence. The wheel of fortune turns rapidly for elected officials and their administrations. But by default, these lifetime Washington DC residents (and their WEF allies) who exert enormous power over the populace will only be more rich and powerful with each passing election season. They hate the USA and those who love it, precisely because the freedoms and stipulations of the Constitution, and the hardy "free settlers of the frontier" ethos, threaten their power.
(I don't mean every, or even most of the residents of DC. I mean those who are the most personally enriched and who wield the most political power without being elected or appointed by someone who is elected. Most of these people are in the vast NGO network.)
How much fraud and abuse has to occur before it's able to be labeled as "corruption"?
Fraud literally means intentional lying in accounting or other financial representations, for the purpose of improperly benefiting someone. If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
> If people in government are benefited directly or indirectly by fraud, that's literally included in the definition of corruption.
Yup, that endpoint is fine and can be agreed with.
People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though. And if a few percent of the money their program spends is wasted or benefits other people through fraud-- that's not corruption either.
And the blanket cuts, layoffs, offers for voluntary separation /early retirement, and contract cancellations don't seem to be aimed at the thing we agree is corruption.
> People in government having a job doing something you think isn't useful isn't corruption, though
I didn't say anything about that; I don't think I know enough yet to have a fully formed opinion.
But I do think that the overly powerful DC bureaucracy, DC NGOs, and corruption that holds it together is a worthy common enemy for all of us - that's what I'm trying to point out.
I'm actually amazed at Democrats' position on this. I grew up in a Democratic family... We used to be the anti-establishment party! JFK was a Democrat - and he's the one who was apparently taken out by the CIA because he said he was going to destroy it. It used to be Republicans who wanted to keep the institutional status quo in DC.
Either way, I think a pro-Democracy attitude will oppose growing power of unelected officials, regardless of political leanings.
DOGE headed by Elon Musk was one of Trump's foremost campaign promises.
In terms of democracy, that is about as direct of an electoral mandate as possible.
> not a lot of Pro-democracy leanings to spare right now
How about having been duly elected in the ballot boxes? Being pro-democracy means accepting and implementing the will of the people.
(Trump disputed the election results in 2020 because he believed there was widespread election fraud. That may be evidence he was deluded, but I don't think it's necessarily evidence of being anti-democracy in his leanings.)
It was a sideways reference to an old line from a detective movie.
I'm trying to say that the emperor is nude, and you are arguing that the threads might be so small as to not see them - or, rather, that the Media said he was naked, so while the president claims that he is wearing clothes, and that might be evidence he is deluded, his open ass in the wind not evidence of his pro-nudity leanings.
(This ignores the fact that he rose from the republican party, one that has been operating in full defiance of open democracy since bush v. gore. Republcans don't want "the will of the people", otherwise they wouldn't push so hard for voter suppression.)
It's a claim so baffling that it makes me assume you aren't operating in good faith.
Moreover, where do people think corruption comes from?
The human desire to be richer and the power to make it happen.
Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
And worse, that the poorly-vetted people who have attached themselves to this administration don't?
The idea that getting rid of fraud in a chaotic fashion is going to lead to less fraud is laughable, unless the assumption is also 'All of the people who are doing this are altruistic and moral.'
If you create chaos at scale, you simply end up with different fraud.
And you can quote me on this in 6 years when investigations begin to lead to trials...
(Which, naturally, Republicans will claim are politically-motivated? But you know who complains loudest about the rule of law? People who do illegal things.)
Musk has talked explicitly about unwinding portions of NASA and replacing it with SpaceX to "improve efficiency."
Which honestly should happen to some extent (I'm not a fan of SLS). But we shouldn't become beholden to one vendor, and it's sure looking a lot more like removing options for the future and competition than a play for efficiency.
And anyone doing this for their own companies in the past would be a textbook example of corruption.
People forget that Boeing space was an excellent engineering company at one point.
One of the things that fucked it up was decades of cost-plus government work.
Companies become the most profitable versions of themselves the market allows them to be... which without competition usually doesn't bode well for excellence.
>Do people think Trump, Musk, and Thiel don't want to be richer?
FYI, lots of dumb people actually DO believe that. "Oh they have so much money already" they say. They don't even attempt to square that with collecting more resources than some Gods, for, reasons.
Others have asked, and I'm going to ask: Prove the fraud. That is a specific charge, with a specific meaning - as you point out yourself in your comment.
Pointing to money that was spent differently than you think it should be is not fraud, no matter how much you want to claim it.
Pointing to money being spent in suboptimal ways is not fraud. Maybe it's waste - but often it's what the law calls for (aka definitionally the opposite of fraud).
Yelling very loudly about how it's all fraud and waste is not proof. It doesn't matter how loudly you yell.
Repeating "there's so much fraud, omg, fraud everywhere, soooo much fraud" over and over is not proof. Even if your repetitions would make an animated gif jealous.
Actually prove the fraud: Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law, that the people authorizing the spending were lying, and there was direct enrichment of someone via those lies and misspending. It's not hard if of it around.
> Show that the money was spent in a way different than proscribed by law
When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
DOGE is apparently exposing a system of dubious and questionable spending at scale. If "wasteful" is an understatement, don't be surprised when taxpayers use "fraud" to describe the decisions made to blow their money.
Even if a court finds that funding that "drag show in Ecuador" was lawful, doesn't take the sting out. It doesn't take the fact away that someone benefited who probably shouldn't have, relative to the government's broader budget purposes. It might enrage people even more that it was a systemic abuse of grant money.
> When people find loopholes in the law to obtain grants, do you defend their actions because technically it didn't break the law?
I don't defend their actions as moral. I think the loophole should be closed. I also think that they didn't commit fraud, as a loophole is by definition legal.
As for all your nonsense about money being spent different than you would like: I get it, you're very upset. As I covered before: money being spend different than you would like it to be spent is not fraud, no matter how much you rant and hate.
I'm not an American and I'm not expressing my likes or dislikes in this matter. I'm interested in seeing a healthy America. I'm interested in the details, drama, action, science and politics which trickles down or across to the rest of us in the world.
You mention morality, but then say my "likes" are nonsense. You've even pushed me into the "rant" and "hate" zone! I'm trying to have a civil discussion about curious things. Insinuating I'm ranting and hating doesn't help.
Maybe we differ on the morality point. In my mind, anything immoral is a problem worth solving.
The law sometimes trails behind what the community needs. In my country Australia, the law sometimes doesn't protect the community from harm (bail laws, police strip-search powers, weak foreign investment review boards, lack of industry oversight allowing criminal gangs to infiltrate construction industry including major government contracts - yes these are real and recent examples.) We don't want the law to fail. We like "the law", and because we like it, when it does fail we need to face it, name it, and deal with it.
The post I originally replied to accused fraud. There is a legal definition of fraud - so prove it.
Everything you're going on about has nothing to do with fraud, and is 100% irrelevant since its not about evidence of fraud.
I mentioned morality of loopholes because to me your question looked like some sort of end-run around providing evidence of fraud. That's also why I clearly stated the difference between my opinions and the legal factuality.
Prove the claimed fraud.
If you want the law changed, that's fine - convince congress to do it. Even if the law changes, fraud must be proved under the laws that were relevant when the allegedly fraudulent event occurred.
So again - prove fraud (hint, i doubt you can no matter what your feelings are).
This is a forum not a court of law. You're hung up on "fraud" and lost sight of the discussion.
Sometimes "fraud" is, for the time being, billowing black smoke. There's a small chance it's a harmless smoke machine, not a fire. Some will cling to that hope, but many others will yell fire.
The process with DOGE is unfolding, so hang tight! Surely you agree "efficiency" would be a good outcome. They're aiming for a tight ship not a cash-haemorrhaging behemoth.
Let Musk work on it for a bit. Heckle later if he doesn't get results. I'll join you in heckling, but for now it's great what they're doing. Shocking that Teslas are burning.
You originally replied to someone who asked "How much fraud and abuse...", so they weren't tethered to only "fraud", they were talking about the generally alarming and wasteful spending of the public's money.
> Presidential administrations have been repeatedly trying to deal with the sheer behemoth bureaucracy, the growing power of unelected officials, and all the associated corruption since the early 1960s and so far have been defeated every time
Clinton cut the size of the government considerably – 400k federal workers! – but you probably didn’t hear a lot about it because it was a thoughtful process designed not to impact the ability of the government, and because it undercuts the narrative that Democrats increase spending which is popular in right-wing propaganda. What DOGE is doing locks in as much cost and disruption as possible while minimizing benefits because that’s not the actual goal (scoring political points against what’s perceived as a democratic stronghold).
The constitution doesn't mention anything about any federal agencies. The Department of State didn't even exist until a 1789 law signed by George Washington.
USAID was established by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Its express purpose is to fund U.S. foreign economic and humanitarian assistance programs.
If the majority of USAID money is going towards things that do not align with the law that governs it, would you say that fits somewhere under the umbrella of "waste, fraud, and abuse"?
Congress controls the budget, it really is that simple.
If I believe USAID is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, I’m free to express that at the ballot box where I vote for a congressperson who wishes to vote on the next budget accordingly.
The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
> The executive has many dimensions of freedom with regard to federal agencies. “Existence of” and “funding of” are not among those dimensions of freedom.
I don't think the current administration actually abolished USAID or its funding; it just froze outgoing transfers from it. Some of the verbage used by Musk & others is exaggerated. They're playing to their voter base, unfortunately. It doesn't accurately describe what is technically or legally happening.
Elected officials lying about what they are doing seems bad, by your line of thought about fraud and accountability and all.
Unelected ones - worse still?
The unsurprisingly-ignored central sin of the Trump administration for those who voted for it for reasons of "free speech" or "reducing government corruption" or "accountability" is that Trump and his circle do not actually believe in any of those things and are not acting in ways consistent with any of those priciples. Those are just the things they say to get votes so they can grab all the power they can.
Anyone opposed to government waste or corruption should be beating down the door to get Republicans to impeach Trump because he's trying to create a whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents.
Yeah, I hate that. Their talk is closer to WWE guys in the ring (at least on X) than the thoughtful orators whose pictures line the oval office. There's no thoughtful, careful, wise poise about it. There are many others like me who also dislike how things are said, but we look back at the actions taken (not words said) and are a lot more happy with them than we are with Biden's actions (or lack thereof).
> whole hell of a lot of corruption-and-waste-enabling precedents
Could you elaborate? I'm curious to know specifics you'd call out as examples.
here we just call for impeachment of judges who rule against us https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-federal-judges-impea... - “at a certain point, you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge.” - what else you got in mind, exactly, Donald?
and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that. should be trivial to imagine ways THAT could be misused.
Musk's entire role is pretty suspect - where was the Senate confirmation hearing or law authorizing the delegation of power to him? where is the authority over departments headed by actual cabinet members beyond "Trump said so"?
another big flashing warning sign is RFK and the CDC re-opening the vaccines/autism thing. wouldn't it be curious if suddenly a new study contradicts decades of research there? seems a bit wasteful to re-litigate unless you have reason to believe you'll get the result you want, not the one the numbers have been pointing to...
What are the good actions? Laying people off to save pennies off the budget? Promising tax cuts to enlarge the national deficit? Renaming shit?
(EDIT: another big corruption-enablement thing would be deciding the FCC is the "let's police speech i don't like" department.)
> and obviously there's the whole impoundment thing we've just been talking about - the executive blatantly ignoring a law that restricted that
The law didn't restrict it, the Constitution prohibits it without law allowing it. The Impoundment Control Act provided a limited allowance for impoundment, rather than actually curtailing it.
Agreed, and in addition, DOGE is also on the path to be guilty of mass murder, given than historians widely consider Mao guilty of the famine from the Great Leap Forward, and projected deaths from their policies are beginning to be tabulated.
I would suggest reading the links. You can question the scale but suddenly disrupting food and medical aid is profoundly disruptive and will have generational impacts if it’s not reversed or others don't step in to fill the gap.
Yes, it is wild to me to see how PEPFAR was for years held up as the Republican’s flagship foreign program but so few were willing to speak up to defend it.
There are no audits, there are no reports, there is little to no transparency with DOGE. They're gutting first, thinking later and it's costing us a ton. How can you trust an administration to expose corrupt spending when they freeze the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?
Yes, of course it's a good concept. The problem is then giving the execution of the concept to arrogant people who are completely ignorant of what they're cutting. Then when they ignore the law, to double-down and keep pushing. The partisan politics come in when people cheer for wanton destruction because it's their side doing it.
Audit committees have been around forever, because people think they are a good concept. A large fraction of the (time) cost in government (or dealing with the government) is dealing with initiatives to audit everything, and cut wasteful spending.
Not to say that eliminating waste isn't a good concept, but do not conflate the _idea_ of eliminating waste with any one particular implementation.
> You will notice governments around the world copying the method. That is, launching initiatives to audit everything,
Which is it? Are they copying DOGE or are they auditing things, because what DOGE is doing is not auditing. Auditing involves bringing in people who understand what they are looking at.
If your goal is cutting waste in the government, DOGE is absolutely the worst possible way to do it.
The idea of bringing in a bunch of "whiz kids" who know absolutely nothing about the departments they're auditing [1], axing people arbitrarily (i.e., firing seemingly everybody who is "probationary"), and cutting programs seemingly purely by Ctrl-F'ing for keywords without even bothering to figure out if the keyword even means what you're looking for in context is absolute clown shoes for good governance.
The fact that they're breaking all sorts of laws in the process makes it even worse; and to top it off, they can't even bring themselves to be honest to the courts about who is responsible for their actions.
No, DOGE is undeniably a rotten concept from inception to practice.
[1] Seemingly flummoxed by the existence of things like sentinel values in databases for "we don't know," based on some of the "fraud" they've very loudly proclaimed.
> Congress doesnt seem to be exposing the waste that DOGE is. A rose by any other name is just as sweet
So you aren't actually opposed to waste or corruption? Since corruption in the purpose of getting rid of things you personally find wasteful is fine with you? You just want the big bad scary government to employ less people? But the ones the executive does employ should be able to do whatever they want, laws be damned?
