Elon Musk, the sector’s richest guy and the pinnacle of Donald Trump’s so-called Division of Govt Potency (DOGE), desires large cuts to The us’s core protection internet systems.
“Studies don’t imply the rest, you’ve were given to in truth take motion,” Musk stated in an interview Monday on FOX Trade Community, explaining that his function is to slash as much as $700 billion from entitlement systems — crucial services and products and systems like Social Safety, Medicaid, Medicaid, unemployment insurance coverage, and meals stamps.
Since Trump took workplace, DOGE and Musk have initiated mass firings around the govt, whilst calling for a lot of contracts and rentals to be terminated. Trump’s hatchet males have additionally particularly honed in on Social Safety. Already, they’ve closed 10 Social Safety Management box workplaces, with plans to near dozens extra, whilst additionally getting rid of staff who have been intended to assist seniors get right of entry to their advantages. Social Safety mavens and insiders warn those cuts — and the DOGE crew’s get right of entry to to information and operations they don’t perceive — threaten this system’s talent to serve as, and may result in assessments no longer going out to seniors who depend on them.
Trump and Musk have additionally many times, falsely instructed that Social Safety bills might be going out to lifeless people who find themselves over 100 years previous — and even 300 years previous, as Trump claimed in his cope with to Congress final week. Musk has additionally asserted, with completely no foundation, that Social Safety is “the largest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Musk’s slash-and-burn function in Trump’s management seems to be producing actual blowback: Tesla’s inventory has been plunging as car gross sales decline, activists protest out of doors the corporate’s showrooms, and vandals tag Cybertrucks with graffiti and canine feces.
In spite of reporting from The Washington Publish on Monday suggesting that DOGE officers are beginning to fear about dangerous “PR,” Musk instructed later within the day he may push for large cuts to Social Safety, Medicaid, and different protection internet systems.
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“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — lots of the federal spending is entitlements — that’s the large one to get rid of,” he stated. “That’s form of part trillion, perhaps $600-700 billion a 12 months.”
There’s no skilled on the earth who thinks there may be $700 billion value of annual fraud in The us’s protection internet systems. Musk at one level within the interview cited a Govt Duty Administrative center document which estimated that the federal government would possibly lose between $233 billion and $521 billion yearly to fraud, however that document coated the entire of the government — no longer simply the ones systems. (The sizable frauds happening in systems like Medicare and Medicaid are generally performed through rip-off companies, no longer recipients.)
Musk’s risk to protection internet systems come as Republican lawmakers get ready to slash $880 billion from Medicaid, the federal government’s medical health insurance program for the deficient, particularly in order that Trump may give The us’s wealthiest and massive firms every other spherical of tax cuts.
It’s simple to image Trump and Musk’s repeated assaults on Social Safety, Medicaid, and different protection internet systems being a political legal responsibility for Republicans in 2026 — particularly if Trump’s repeated tariff threats and Musk’s mass firings achieve tanking the economic system.
On Monday, Musk made transparent whom he plans to scapegoat if his protection internet cuts enrage electorate: undocumented immigrants.
He let loose a grin as he claimed the meant $700 billion value of fraud in entitlement systems is “a mechanism through which the Democrats draw in and retain unlawful immigrants, through necessarily paying them to return right here after which turning them into electorate.” (It’s unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, which is why it very infrequently occurs.)
“Because of this the Democrats are so disappointed in regards to the scenario, as a result of they’re shedding — if we flip off this gigantic cash magnet for unlawful immigrants, then they are going to go away and they are going to lose electorate,” Musk persevered.
Musk, who’s nonetheless value an estimated $320 billion, greater than any person else on the earth, will without a doubt proceed to assault probably the most inclined contributors of our society. But when Musk and DOGE hurt the protection internet systems that American citizens depend on, the general public will undergo — and Republicans may really well lose exact electorate.
