Elon Musk: We’re Watching the ‘Thrashing’ of the Bureaucracy
“If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.”
President Donald Trump and Elon Musk sat down for a joint interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. They discussed the full-court press by Democratic lawmakers, the legacy media, and leftist federal judges to hinder the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team’s mission of identifying fraud within the federal government.
Trump said he once wrongly assumed that if he, as president, issued an executive order, it would be implemented. However, he soon realized that on many occasions, bureaucrats opposed to these measures simply refused to act.
His eyes have been opened since those days. Now older and wiser, Trump understands that nothing is more important than having the right people working under him to implement his policies. He needs federal employees he can trust to execute his orders, even if they personally disagree with them.
Acutely aware of the Left’s clumsy attempts to drive a wedge into their relationship, Trump praised Musk and said he “could not find anyone smarter” to lead DOGE.
Musk told Hannity he “loves” the president. He echoed Trump’s frustration with the resistance he has faced from disgruntled bureaucrats. He is “here to provide the president with — with technology support. … It’s a very important thing, because the president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country, but then they don’t get implemented, you know?
“One of the biggest functions of the DOGE team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out,” he said.
Musk then cut straight to the point: “If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.
“I think what we’re seeing here is the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.”
Just one month into its work, DOGE has already uncovered a stunning degree of waste, fraud, and abuse inside the federal agencies.
From DOGE’s first revelations that exposed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as little more than a global slush fund for progressive causes, to it’s gobsmacking discovery that 25 million individuals over age 100 remain in the Social Security database even though there are fewer than 100,000 people aged 100 or older alive in the U.S. today, taxpayers have been stunned by its findings.
According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!
Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security
pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
Democrats, fully aware that the shocking reports of corruption and waste are both accurate and well-documented, are scrambling to halt DOGE’s audit. However, hysteria has replaced rational thinking, leaving them without a coherent response. Unlike their more coordinated attacks on Trump – such as the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, and the politically motivated indictments brought by federal and state prosecutors – Democrats are now lashing out haphazardly, creating disastrous optics for their brand.
Their efforts to use far-left federal judges to prevent Musk’s team from accessing citizens’ sensitive information have yielded mixed results. While some lesser-known judges have shown willingness, higher-profile figures like U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan – who presided over Trump’s criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C. – have (at least initially) been reluctant to blow up their credibility based on nonsense.
Although Chutkan may change her mind if presented with “evidence” of irreparable harm in the future, she rejected a request from 14 state attorneys general on Tuesday to block DOGE from firing employees or accessing sensitive government records. In her ruling, she wrote that the states had failed to demonstrate immediate irreparable harm, emphasizing that the court cannot act based solely on media reports.
The notion that the judiciary should control the executive branch is utterly absurd – especially given the vast number of federal employees who routinely access such information in the normal course of their work. This hypocrisy becomes even more glaring when one considers the Biden administration’s 2021 proposal to force banks to report all transactions over $600 to the IRS, an egregious intrusion into citizens’ financial privacy.
After witnessing the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” tactics over the past decade, the majority of Americans are delighted by the DOGE audit. They are deeply interested in seeing where their tax dollars are going. The minority of voters who oppose the audit are those benefiting from the widespread abuses being uncovered. President Trump is delivering precisely what he promised during his campaign.
And Musk nailed it: If unelected bureaucrats can obstruct the president’s agenda, then we are living in a bureaucracy, rather than a democratic republic.
The Left’s collective meltdown is simply the “thrashing” of the bureaucracy.
[A full transcript of this interview can be read on the White House website.]
Here’s the full Trump and Elon Musk interview with Sean Hannity. pic.twitter.com/uxcmLyvSNM
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 19, 2025
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
“Just one month into its work, DOGE has already uncovered a stunning degree of waste, fraud, and abuse inside the federal agencies.”
I think DOGE uncovered something far more sinister: a stunning degree of criminal collusion to facilitate ‘legalized’ corruption to enrich the political class.
Waste, fraud, abuse was just a cover story.
Like Carlin said, “It’s a big club, and you’re not in it!”
Nailed it
But… no one is going to lose their bloated pension or go to prison over this, and that is the real shame because there is no deterrence in place.
But, somebody could have his red, Swingline stapler confiscated.
and be exiled to the basement and be given a broom to sweep up.
Given a can of bug spray
I wonder if those laid off are missing work yet?
Or, maybe better yet, hand deliver checks to anyone aged 100 or more. Seems like that would be an interesting job for someone who may not want to leave government employment yet.
It would be perfectly in line with the horse-and-buggy level of service the government provides when it’s time for you to pay your Medicare premium!
I don’t know who is going to lose what, but I know that when Trump is done:
a. nothing is going to be the same again.
b. no one else could have done it.
c. he did more than I ever have expected
And no matter what he does, people will complain:
a. he should’ve done this
b. he shouldn’t have done that
c. he should’ve said this
d. he shouldn’t have said that
You are so right. Especially when you say that no one else could have done it.
And all the while, he had the swamp fighting his every move. The bureaucracy, the Dems, the RINOs, and the media. Imagine if they worked with him to make America great again instead of blocking everything because orange man bad.
Honestly, I never thought we’d get this far before Trump.
It’s a Republic for God sakes
The more I see of the workings of the feral government, the more I know that we’re actually dealing with an Idiocracy. It’s like Mike Judge designed our government and he did so for maximum effect
When you say ‘see’ you mean the unevidenced claims of a liar with a massive conflict of interest. You really were born yesterday
Must be beginners’ luck that we won, and you didn’t.
Did you say “feral government” deliberately? It might fit …
Somebody needs to alert RFK jr to these age cohorts. This is astonishing data-driven news that our health care system is so effective. This country clearly leads the world of socialized medicine and non-processed foods in longevity and therefore health. Lets bring back red dye #3. Obesity and drug overdoses must be good.
/sarc
It would be interesting to see the effect on the financial health of SS once the dead or frauds are culled from the list. It would also be interesting to see how the DoJ pursues the fraud to recover SS money.
Trump has not been in office a month, yet he has done so much so quickly that no one has had a chance to analyze the full extent of what is taking place or what the ramifications will be.
We should take this opportunity to sit back and enjoy it.
We are witnessing a paradigm change!
I am very happy with progress, my only complaints being that the number of deportations must be much greater,
Doge has been a scream, talk about shell shock. And savings are really gratifying.
Well- you actually got it right. Sort of. It’s painfully obvious ‘the moron’puts very little thought or analysis into any issue before opening his mouth. ( What’s his tariff policy today??? He’s already changed it , what, 5 times?? Musk is following the lead of ‘the moron’ .Talks about firing people even though he has no clue as to what they do.
It’s a s..tshow, overseen by two s…tstains.
“we live in a bureaucracy.”
Deep state though they were invincible. They had a grand time F ing Trump, totally oblivious about long term consequences. They are much like blacks who pulled some really nasty crap, and who are now suffering huge losses. They blissfully squandered white goodwill, without that all their perks evaporated so quickly they did not see it coming. Finally we are returning to a merit based society.
“gobsmacking discovery that 25 million individuals over age 100 remain in the Social Security database”
I have seen this headline, but have not see data showing those names received payment. That is an important distinction.
After my dad died, my family (5 kids, and widowed mom) went hungry for about a year when Social Security said they overpaid… and then decided to make up the diff by witholding payment. I’m not joking- we went hungry. Mom was not going to go on welfare. My older brother who was 14 was old enough to work at a dairy and so we got milk. However it was the one dairy farmer in the area who as such an ass that he made his milker’s pay him for the milk (common courtesy is take a couple of gallons when you need them for family consumption).
I know the people getting this money are not widowed moms with 5 kids, so they damn well better be going after them to pay it back.
To be fair, about a decades ago SSA automatically stopped benefit checks for those age 115 and older, though the bulk of the reported 25 million over age 100 is under the 115 age threshold and still eligible for getting benefits.
Active Social Security # are not just about SSI checks. The other data point is that DOGE discovered there were roughly 40+ million Active SS# in excess of total US population. All those are fraudulent. They can be used to gain work by those ineligible. They can be used to create a new (fake) identity.
All the ‘bad’ SSI # both the 40+ million active but excess and the many millions of active but likely dead SSI # can be used to draw benefits from other Federal agencies. What’s to stop someone from using it to get SBA loan? Or to have scammed PPP loans? The IRS is, in $ terms, the largest provider of Federal dollars and with an active but ‘bad’ SSI # one can get all sorts of refundable tax credits. A criminal could use a ‘clean’ but ‘bad’ SSI # for the background check and purchase a firearm. FWIW the SSA, the IRS, ICE, Homeland Security and so on don’t have a mechanism to share basic data. In some cases the sharing is prohibited by policy.
The problem, is it the bureaucracy still wants to operate by the rules of the Biden idiocracy.
It’s slowly sinking in with some of them that Biden Rules aren’t going to fly.
Can DOGE actually fire anyone?
I was under the impression they recommended the cuts and then the actual department did the packages.
And are they actually firing anyone?
The are offering buyout packages – it’s not the same thing.
Only their own people. Trump has made it clear that Musk is a special personal advisor. He investigates for and reports to Trump, any action requiring authority is Trump’s.
Those numbers on age are amazing. Seriously. Either no one has ever bothered to get this information in any analysis of the longevity of the SS system, or they did cull out the info and it was embargoed. Either of those is a travesty.
When someone has a 100+ birthday, the party in the assisted living facility is covered by the evening news, at least the local version. Why have the 125th, and 139th birthdays not made the news? Validating all those files in the 100+ ranges should already be underway. Even if it is all due to “typos” it needs to shown as such, corrected and the public advised.
Wow does this site actually do any critical thinking. Parroting President Elon Musk’s unsubstantiated claims. A man known to be prone to lying, like all the time.
Prediction it’ll turn out that he doesnt know what any of the people did and makes a gigantic mess of it, sounds real familiar lol
Your desperation is energizing.
Dance, monkey, dance
Christ. How many sockpuppets do you actually have, Johnny?