Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the pinnacle of Donald Trump’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), desires huge cuts to America’s core security internet packages.
“Stories don’t imply something, you’ve acquired to really take motion,” Musk mentioned in an interview Monday on FOX Enterprise Community, explaining that his objective is to slash as much as $700 billion from entitlement packages — important companies and packages like Social Safety, Medicaid, Medicaid, unemployment insurance coverage, and meals stamps.
Since Trump took workplace, DOGE and Musk have initiated mass firings throughout the federal government, whereas calling for quite a few contracts and leases to be terminated. Trump’s hatchet males have additionally particularly honed in on Social Safety. Already, they’ve closed 10 Social Safety Administration area workplaces, with plans to shut dozens extra, whereas additionally eliminating employees who have been meant to assist seniors entry their advantages. Social Safety specialists and insiders warn these cuts — and the DOGE workforce’s entry to knowledge and operations they don’t perceive — threaten this system’s means to operate, and will result in checks not going out to seniors who depend on them.
Trump and Musk have additionally repeatedly, falsely advised that Social Safety funds might be going out to useless people who find themselves over 100 years outdated — and even 300 years outdated, as Trump claimed in his handle to Congress final week.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 administration seems to be producing actual blowback: Tesla’s inventory has been plunging as car gross sales decline, activists protest exterior the corporate’s showrooms, and vandals tag Cybertrucks with graffiti and canine feces.
Regardless of reporting from The Washington Put up on Monday suggesting that DOGE officers are beginning to fear about unhealthy “PR,” Musk advised later within the day he may push for large cuts to Social Safety, Medicaid, and different security internet packages.
“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — a lot of the federal spending is entitlements — that’s the massive one to get rid of,” he mentioned. “That’s type of half trillion, possibly $600-700 billion a yr.”
There isn’t any professional on the planet who thinks there’s $700 billion price of annual fraud in America’s security internet packages. Musk at one level within the interview cited a Authorities Accountability Workplace report which estimated that the federal government might lose between $233 billion and $521 billion yearly to fraud, however that report lined the entire of the federal authorities — not simply these packages. (The sizable frauds occurring in packages like Medicare and Medicaid are usually carried out by rip-off companies, not recipients.)
Musk’s menace to security internet packages come as Republican lawmakers put together to slash $880 billion from Medicaid, the federal government’s well being insurance coverage program for the poor, particularly in order that Trump may give America’s wealthiest and massive companies one other spherical of tax cuts.
It’s simple to image Trump and Musk’s repeated assaults on Social Safety, Medicaid, and different security internet packages being a political legal responsibility for Republicans in 2026 — particularly if Trump’s repeated tariff threats and Musk’s mass firings reach tanking the economic system.
On Monday, Musk made clear whom he plans to scapegoat if his security internet cuts enrage voters: undocumented immigrants.
He set free a smile as he claimed the supposed $700 billion price of fraud in entitlement packages is “a mechanism by which the Democrats appeal to and retain unlawful immigrants, by primarily paying them to return right here after which turning them into voters.” (It’s unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, which is why it very not often occurs.)
“This is the reason the Democrats are so upset concerning the scenario, as a result of they’re dropping — if we flip off this gigantic cash magnet for unlawful immigrants, then they’ll go away and they’re going to lose voters,” Musk continued.
Musk, who’s nonetheless price an estimated $320 billion, greater than anybody else on the planet, will certainly proceed to assault essentially the most weak members of our society. But when Musk and DOGE hurt the protection internet packages that People depend on, the general public will undergo — and Republicans may very nicely lose precise voters.
