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Goodbye Jeff Bezos Newsletter!

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On the Shameful Ukraine Shakedown

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It's Not an Audit! It's a Grift!

IS PRESIDENT MUSK THE BALLSIEST GRIFTER OF ALL TIME

“What the Hell is Elon doing?”

If that was your response to watching Elon Musk on a stage throwing a Nazi salute, you were not the only one.

In fact, a great deal of time and energy is being spent trying to figure out exactly what President Musk is doing? In the name of fighting waste, it is clear that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the most inefficient and wasteful agency in the entire federal government. And that’s saying something next to the Pentagon! From wantonly and illegally accessing sensitive databases, to shutting down congressionally approved and appropriated programs like USAID, to seemingly firing people at random including those responsible for our nuclear stockpile. On top of that, his department can’t even efficiently account for the costs of its own actions.This isn’t going to end well!1

Elon Musk is the Wreck-it Ralph of the Trump Administration.

His actions are akin to giving a baby a hand grenade. It’s a great way to get attention…but it will likely end badly for everyone around.

Is it that President Musk just has a penchant for destruction? Does he thrive in a schizophrenic world? Is he the extreme example of the “move fast and break things” mentality of Silicone Valley?

This speculation begs the question, what happened to him? The guy who had enough creative and generative focus to build Tesla after years of struggle, then SpaceX, cannot be the same DOGE Bull in the Government China Store that we see before us.

Is he a dedicated Nazi intent on bringing down the world’s most powerful democratic nation? Is he trying to create a Reichstag Moment by which he and his minions can orchestrate an effective coup? Perhaps he had a mental breakdown. Perhaps he has fallen to the age-old curse of extravagant hubris. He really believes the myth of his own greatness–and is on the precipice of his downfall.2

The speculations above are reflections of models for understanding the age of Musk that are going around the mediasphere:

He’s a sincere ideologue pursuing a clear agenda

He’s mentally unstable

He’s a the victim of his own hubris

The Grifter Model

I find it hard to believe that a man like Elon Musk, however we may debate the depth of his genius, is just randomly breaking things. It is better to assume that he has a rational purpose to everything he does. The trick is to parse out that purpose.

There is no way to really know for sure unless Musk himself offers an explanation for his actions that makes sense. And claiming to be saving democracy from bureaucracy is not a sensible explanation.

Reduced to speculating on President Musk’s intentions, I would like to offer that all of his seemingly irrational actions make perfect sense if we stop analyzing him as a sincere ideologue, or a deranged genius. To make sense of his actions, one need only interpret them through the eyes of a grifter.3

When he stepped out on that stage after the election, he must have been feeling a profound sense of euphoria. He had just spent over a quarter of billion dollars to get the most incompetent failure in presidential history re-elected. Did he do this for attention? Did he spend this kind of money to settle some personal scores? He certainly didn’t dump what for almost everyone else in the world is a fortune so he could be a glorified government auditor.

This money was a high-stakes investment in history’s ultimate grift.

This grift was born when Musk learned that The Orange Don’s decisions were often driven by whomever happened to have his ear last. In an article written in the Washington Post anonymous sources from his first campaign admitted that “[The Orange Don]4 tends to echo the words of the last person with whom he spoke, making direct access to him even more valuable…” Musk understood the kind of power inherent in being the last man in the room with such a malleable personality. How could Musk secure such a position?

Appealing to the twice impeached president was the easy part for the world’s wealthiest man, with one of the world’s largest communications technologies at his command. Smother him in praise and money. Everyone knows that the way to The Orange Don’s gaudy coifed heart is through his ego…and his bank account. And one only has to sell their soul, surrender their dignity and accept the eternal scorn of history. Not a problem for the likes of Musk.

After the election, the grift was in place. There he was, standing on that platform as if he were the one elected, sharing in his joy. Certainly, he was enticed by the crowd’s exuberance. It may be that he simply got caught up in the moment. Knowing that he just won an election on a campaign grounded in fascism, he knew his audience and gave them what they wanted–a hearty Nazi salute.

And the crowd cheered.

Perhaps he was caught up in the moment. Another possibility is that his controversial action was more intentional. In throwing the Nazi salute he was testing the depth of his grift. He was evaluating just how far he could push his con before going too far.

And the crowd cheered.

And the Republican Party twisted themselves into knots to explain away the most odious thing anyone on a national stage could do.

Whether or not he was caught up in the moment, or was cynically testing the waters. The response to that moment gave him a wealth of information. With that one brief scandal Elon Musk learned that he had the Republican base in his pocket, and he had the Republican Party under his heal.

The limits of his grift were far beyond the horizon.

The Evidence

So, this model begs the question, what is the nature of the grift? How can I be so sure that Elon Musk isn’t doing exactly what he says he is doing, selflessly dedicating his time to filtering out government waste and fraud by conducting a “long overdue audit”.

The concept of “wasteful government spending” is one of those unquestioned shibboleths of contemporary politics. Of course the U.S. government is chock full of wasteful spending. Just look around. It goes without question. Any serious political analyst must begin with the premise that the government is wasteful.

Not without reason. The United States government is the largest bureaucracy in the history of the world. It mobilizes trillions of dollars worth of resources to meet the needs of the third largest population in the world, the fourth largest country in the world, and the nation with the largest institutional footprint including military bases and civilian organizations all over the world. If one were to make the claim that the state did all of this without waste…that would be impossible to believe.

But where is this waste?

Contrary to common belief, audits of the U.S. government are not “long overdue.” In fact, every department in the United States Government is audited on a regular basis, every year or two years, by the Government Accountability Office and the Office of the Inspector General. In other words, the government is regularly audited by actual professional auditors who know what they are doing. Of course, it should be noted that among the many federal employees laid off by President Musk, are seventeen Inspectors General. Why would an agency dedicated to fighting waste fire experts in finding waste?5

Consequently, any discerning analyst of government waste has a good idea where the bulk of the waste is.

It’s not in USAID. How do we know? Well, because the Office of the Inspector General publishes its results for everyone to see. You don’t need an X account to see them. They are taxpayer funded and, therefore, open for everyone. Furthermore, they manage to avoid making mistakes like misreporting their figures by a factor of one thousand–because they are highly trained civil servants who know what they are doing.

Here’s the audit results conducted on USAID.

Audit of USAID’s Financial Statements for Fiscal Years 2024 and 2023Download

It’s a bit of a read, but the gist of the report is right there in the opening letter. “For fiscal year 2024, the audit firm found no reportable noncompliance with applicable laws, regulations, contracts, and grant agreements, including the provisions referred to in Section 803(a) of the FFMIA2 they tested. The audit firm also found no material weaknesses but reported two significant deficiencies related to USAID’s internal controls over (1) financial reporting pertaining to personnel and payroll actions (modified repeat finding) and (2) lease reporting in accordance with Statements of Federal Financial Accounting Standards.”

Was USAID perfect? No. Of course not. Is USAID a source of significant waste or fraud that could justify the chaos and suffering created when DOGE shut it down? It’s hard to make the argument that shuttering USAID was worth the cost, unless you are one of those people who likes seeing poor people suffer and die.

No. Programs like USAID are not a source of potential savings for the American people.

However, we do know which department is a significant source of waste and fraud. This is the only department in the federal government that has never passed an audit. This department cannot account for over sixty percent of its assets. Over thirty-five trillion dollars cannot be accounted for by this agency. That amount is fifty percent higher than the entire U.S. economy. The data is staggering.

The department in question? Defense. The good ‘ol DoD!

If Elon Musk and his DOGE team were, in fact, auditors looking for waste, they would locate their office in the Pentagon. That’s where DOGE needs to be unleashed, if anywhere.

If the standard is to shut down a wasteful department, as claimed without evidence for USAID, then the Department of Defense should be shut down at least until its books are in order. If that’s the standard. How can we justify shutting down USAID, without any evidence of waste presented by DOGE, while at the same time increasing spending for the Department of Defense for which evidence of waste is so abundant it is beyond comprehension?

Could it be that an audit of the Department of Defense might dredge up some questions on the billions of dollars’ worth of contracts and the dependence of the department on Elon Musk’s Starlink and Starshield? According to Reuters, “The total value of Musk’s companies’ contracts with the DoD is estimated to be in the billions of dollars, but the true figure cannot be determined since many of them are classified.”

Can you say “conflict of interest?”

In fact, an analysis of DOGE’s actions since its inception reveals some interesting patterns. Take, for instance, the audit of USAID above. It turns out that USAID was in the process of conducting an investigation into its contracts with Elon Musk’s Starlink. What was the nature of this investigation? Alas, we may never know, because it was shut down by the very guy it was investigating. Musk, of course, claims that USAID was an evil organization…but it wasn’t so evil that Musk was willing to turn down a million-dollar contract. At least, thanks to DOGE, we now know the price of evil.

A deeper dive into DOGE world reveals that mass layoffs at agencies conducting investigations into Musk’s businesses is a recurring theme. According to the New York Times, “At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by [layoffs] have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies.”(Fig. 1) See link to the New York Times article above for this image.

This is just the result of the direct impacts of Elon Musk and DOGE. However, it is good to be the last man in the room with the current elected president. A couple of weeks ago the Orange Don crippled the National Labor Relations Board. He fired one of its three board members, thus denying the board the necessary quorum it needed to advocate for workers and oversee labor elections. That the Orange Don is antagonistic to organized labor is no secret, but this action far exceeds anything he did during his first term. What is the difference between the first and second desecration of the Oval Office? According to the New York Times, “On its own, the National Labor Relations Board, an independent watchdog agency for workers’ rights, has 24 investigations into Mr. Musk’s companies…”

It’s a grift, folks. This is clearly a grift.

Shutting down agencies and firing those who might be a threat to Musk’s business interests is not the endgame of this grift, however. If Musk really is the Grifter in Chief, he has bigger goals than simply hiding possible indiscretions.6

The second part of the grift is in access to sensitive federal databases. What could Elon Musk want with access to everyone’s treasury records, IRS data, and other personal information? The federal government is certainly one of the largest repositories of sensitive data in the world, perhaps only rivaled by big tech companies like Amazon, Google, and social media.

Imagine if you were the head of multiple multi-billion dollar companies in an age where artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and any of a number of technological breakthroughs could define the status of your portfolio. If only you could get access to critical information about your competition, about potential start-ups, about ongoing research, patents. That would be of significant advantage to an oligarch.

Now imagine that as a major business owner and wealthy investor, you could paralyze upon whispering in the President’s ear, those bodies in a position to be an obstacle to your business plan. The SEC, the FCC, the CFPB. If only those regulatory agencies would go away.

If this is a Grift, then there is only one question remaining

Elon Musk has successfully purchased a presidency through pandering and dumping truckloads of money on the campaign. He has won over the fascists and the right-wing cultists into his own Cult of Personality. In doing so, he has cowed the most powerful political institution in the country, the Republican Party, into providing cover for his graft.

Musk may go down in history as the greatest grifter of all time.

That leaves one question remaining. Is the president that everyone actually voted for in on the grift…or is he the mark?

I don’t have a good answer to this question.

On one hand, the Orange Don has a long history of grifting. He has grifted his workers, his contractors, students, even his wives. He has no scruples when it comes to getting what he wants.

On the other hand, he does not play well in the sandbox with others. This likely includes grifters. To my knowledge, he has never participated in a con that involved such a visible and equal partner as Elon Musk. The Orange Don works alone.

Also, from the perspective of a conman, is there a better mark than The Orange Don. He is profoundly ignorant, with an overinflated opinion of his own competence and intelligence. He is narcissistic and thin skinned, addicted to praise and pandering and plaudits on his behalf. And he’s greedy. These are the traits of a perfect mark.

Is it possible that when Elon heard that the president was easily influenced by the last person in the room that he recognized an easy mark when it saw one? The only question was, ‘how do I become the last person in the room?’(Fig. 2) Stone is not Forever is a classic immigrants tales. It is a warm reminder of where almost all of us came from. It is also a humbling image of how far we have regressed in this land of immigrants. To order, Click Here

Footnotes

All illustrations except fig. 1 and fig. 2 are AI generated using WordPress. ↩︎

In which case, he is positioned to take us all down with him. ↩︎

I must reiterate that I claim no special insight into Musk’s actions. I’m offering a model that may not be valid. Here I am arguing why I think it is valid. ↩︎

Yep…I’m going to continue not using his name on this venue. ↩︎

Because it’s not an audit. It’s a grift. https://www.tiktok.com/@madsociologist/video/7474314522384239914?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7402607063417718315 ↩︎

Again, it’s impossible to say for sure what the outcome of these investigations would have been. It is possible that all of these investigations would have cleared Musk of any wrongdoing. The problem to highlight, however, is the conflict of interest demonstrated. The fact that Musk is not recusing himself from these conflicts is suspicious. The effect, regardless of Musk’s possible liabilities, is in delegitimizing government as a legitimate authority in investigating big business, which was already tenuous at best, and the advancement of Elon’s business interests. ↩︎