I’ve long thought Elon Musk is a con-man. He sold his Teslas on the basis that they were self-driving. Not. His Cybertrucks are ugly as son, some call them Swastitrucks. .
At this particular event, Trump asks Elon to explain what DOGE is doing because Trump looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing or understand it, AS he ignores Musk’s kid aggressively picking his nose (ick) Hey, why does Musk bring his ill behaved little kid to this meeting (did he wipe his boogers on the resolute desk?) and why is he doing a press conference from THAT angle?
And in that appearance, a journalist called Elon out for inventing something about Gaza that led Trump to lie publicly.
That should have led to stories about how, in Trump’s presence, Elon admitted he makes shit up and Trump repeats them.
For the most part, it didn’t happen:
- NYT noted that Elon offered no proof of fraud, but did not mention the proof that Elon got caught in a lie.
- WaPo focused on the EO, but later explained that neither Trump nor Musk offered proof — but didn’t mention he got caught in a lie.
- Politico focused on the EO, but later noted that Elon said he would police his own conflicts.
- In an analytical piece, CNN claimed that Elon offered examples of fraud (which is false), but didn’t mention Gaza.
After airing Elon about scrutiny he claimed he was getting, WSJ did mention the Gaza question.
Asked about the Trump administration’s false assertion that the federal government sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, the billionaire acknowledged that he might at times promote erroneous information. “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” Musk said. “Nobody is going to bat 1,000.”
But WSJ didn’t pursue the implication of it: that Elon got caught in a false claim.
Musk Promised Government Transparency, DOGE Delivers Maximum Secrecy (techdirt)
But that’s not what is actually happening. Just as when he took over Twitter, we’re learning that Musk’s promises and Musk’s reality are wholly different things. When he promises to make things better for “the people,” he always means “make things better for Elon.”
As you can see, he said those things two days before Elon Musk was elected alongside Donald Trump to (apparently) rip out every bit of accountability from the government of the United States of America. Now that he has near total control over the systems that make the US work, he apparently wants them to be pretty damn secret.
We first heard about this last week when the always excellent 404 Media reported that the DOGE boys were told to stop using Slack, because someone realized the conversations were accessible by FOIA.
Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has learned.
“Good morning, everyone! As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while our various general counsels figure out the best way to handle the records migration to our new EOP [Executive Office of the President] component,” a message seen by 404 Media reads. “Will update as soon as we have more information!”
Sounds like someone’s got something to hide, huh?
Given that not one, not two, but three of the DOGE boys have been outed as having terrible fucking judgment (either blatantly racist tweets or being involved with a fucked up cybercrime group built around Discord and Telegram chat channels) you have to imagine that some shit is going on in those Slack chats.
