The Great Government Efficiency Scam: How Elon Musk and Donald Trump Misled America

In a move that raised eyebrows across the political spectrum, Donald Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency—ironically nicknamed “DOGE”—at the suggestion of billionaire Elon Musk. Musk, known for his obsession with cutting government bureaucracy despite having little understanding of how government actually works, quickly became a central figure in an initiative that was as alarming as it was ill-conceived.

The stated goal was to streamline government operations and root out fraud. Yet months later, the results are clear: no significant efficiencies gained, and perhaps more telling, not a single case of fraud prosecuted.

Despite repeated boasts by both Musk and Trump, who even cited these claims during a nationally televised State of the Union address, there has been no follow-up action. Trump controls the Justice Department and the FBI, led by loyalists Pam Bondi and Kash Patel. If massive fraud truly existed, it stands to reason that at least one person or entity would have been charged. But no one was. No Social Security scams, no fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program abuses—nothing.

The conclusion is inescapable: the fraud narrative was a fabrication, planted to justify the creation of DOGE.

But what was the real goal?

It appears Elon Musk had his eyes not on eliminating waste, but on something far more valuable—access to government data. Almost immediately after DOGE’s formation, Musk gained access to critical databases, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This gave him an unprecedented look at billions of records detailing the personal, financial, and health information of hundreds of millions of Americans.

The IRS holds deeply intimate knowledge about nearly every American—social security numbers, financial transactions, medical deductions, and employment history, often dating back decades. In my own case, they’ve been tracking my tax filings since I was 15 years old. The sheer amount of personal information housed within government systems is staggering.

Why would Musk want this data?

The answer seems clear: to fuel his artificial intelligence ambitions. Competing against platforms like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and China’s DeepSeek, Musk’s own AI, “Grok,” lagged behind. Access to such a massive, detailed dataset would give Musk an enormous advantage in training his AI models—essentially giving him a shortcut that his competitors could only dream of.

In the end, DOGE wasn’t about efficiency at all. It was a scam—another hollow promise in a long line of Trump-era deceptions. The promise of government efficiency sounds great on paper, but under Trump and Musk’s leadership, it was just another example of “fake news” meant to serve the ambitions of the powerful, not the people.