‘Don’t mess with DOGE’: Musk uses X as weapon in cost-cutting crusade

As Elon Musk digs into the US federal bureaucracy in his crusade to slash government spending, he has a tool that no aspiring cost-cutter has had before: his own giant social media platform to debate, shame and bludgeon anyone who stands in his way.

Since the inauguration, Musk has attacked journalists and X users for posting the names of people working with him, calling it “a crime”. He’s accused Treasury Department officials of “breaking the law every hour of every day.” And Musk has mocked Democratic senator Chuck Schumer as “hysterical.”

Elon Musk has transformed X into his political megaphone.Credit: AP

On Monday (US time), he celebrated his progress, posting he had fed the US Agency for International Development, the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid, “into the wood chipper”.

And on Tuesday, he began a poll on X: “Would you like DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency] to audit the IRS?”

The comments show how Musk, who unlike traditional government figures rarely holds news conferences or speaks to reporters, is using his social media site as a powerful tool to promote his goals as part of the Trump administration. Since the inauguration, Musk has unleashed a barrage of posts to his more than 215 million followers, promoting conspiratorial rumours about his adversaries, pressuring senators to confirm President Donald Trump’s cabinet picks and weighing in on foreign elections.

On top of that, Musk’s account is becoming one of the few sources of information about the billionaire’s secretive stampede to slash the federal budget, an initiative he calls the Department of Government Efficiency.

X has given Musk an unusual avenue to showcase his unapologetically confrontational approach to cost-cutting in a way that appeals to Trump’s base, tech policy experts said.

“The performative aspect of this is key. It’s a big part of what populism is,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute. “To be able to have this very visible shake-up really is important to the constituency that rose the administration to power.”

Musk and a spokesperson for the cost-cutting initiative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s transformation of X into his political megaphone began when he bought the social media company in October 2022. The next year, he became the most followed person on the site. Engagement with his posts has since mushroomed, according to X’s metrics, making him the loudest voice on the platform.

Now Musk, who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has charged into his new role to cut government spending, swiftly moving to transform at least half a dozen government agencies, challenging congressional authority and potentially breaching civil service protections.

His project has worked to shut down USAID. Leaders of the cost-cutting initiative have also pushed out top officials there and at the Treasury Department who objected to the actions of his representatives, and ended leases on government office spaces.

As part of those efforts, Musk has used his X account to critique federal agencies in his crosshairs. USAID is “evil” and “a criminal organisation”, he wrote in separate posts on Sunday.

Lawmakers including Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Schumer have accused Musk of overreach.

Early on Tuesday, Musk reposted a comment by Schumer, who said Congress must stop what amounted to an unauthorised hostile takeover of the government.

“Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that DOGE is doing work that really matters,” Musk said in response to Schumer. “This is the one shot American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people.”

Musk’s business portfolio, which relies in part on government contracts and subsidies, has raised conflict-of-interest concerns, although Trump has brushed off those fears.

After Ocasio-Cortez criticised Musk’s conflicts of interest, Musk replied, “Do you actually write these or am I replying to your intern?”

Musk also turned to the platform in recent days to defend those working on his initiative. The billionaire has likened identifying those assisting his cost-cutting effort to doxxing, an online harassment tactic that involves posting private information like addresses and phone numbers.

After several workers’ names were published in media reports, X removed some posts on the platform that publicised the employees’ identities and suspended some accounts that had shared the information.

“Don’t mess with @DOGE,” Musk wrote in a post on Monday night in response to people attempting to name and shame the workers.

Musk also boasted on X about the removal of the account for 18F, a digital services agency that is part of the government’s General Services Administration. After fans raised concerns about projects the agency had worked on, including one that critiqued racial bias in facial recognition systems, Musk posted that the agency was “deleted”.

While its X account is gone, the agency so far has survived.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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