Musk attacks the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker
Yesterday, we launched the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker. This new tool authoritatively demonstrated that Elon Musk had been grossly overstating the cuts implemented by DOGE. While Musk claimed that DOGE had made $105 billion in cuts, the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker revealed that just $8.6 billion of those cuts were verifiable.
Within hours, Musk personally attacked the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker on X:
Musk offered no actual critique of the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker’s methodology. Instead, he is arguing that it is somehow hypocritical to claim that Musk is overstating the scope of the cuts and that the cuts are harmful. This is absurd.
Here are the facts:
1. Many of the cuts implemented by DOGE will have devastating consequences. By terminating various USAID contracts, for example, global health experts expect there will be “166,000 additional deaths” from malaria annually and “200,000 children paralyzed with polio” each year.
2. The size of these contracts, relative to the federal budget, is very small and cutting them will not meaningfully reduce the budget deficit.
There is only one reason Musk is attacking the Musk Watch DOGE Tracker: it is exposing the truth about his efforts.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors