The Department of Government Efficiency is continuing to dig deep into the finances of the government, and with it, some wild claims are circulating.
From there being no gold left in Fort Knox to sending $50 million worth of condoms to (the wrong) Gaza, the head of the DOGE has been called out for his various headline-grabbing soundbites.
His latest is a doozy, saying that the DOGE has uncovered 14 'magic money computers' within the government, apparently making money out of thin air and sending it out.
Advert
Texas Senator Ted Cruz hosted Elon Musk on his Verdict podcast, where the world's richest man made the spectacular claim after being given access to the Treasury Department.
Saying that these computers are going undercover, Musk explained: "'You may think that government computers all talk to each other, they all synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere and it's coherent and that the numbers you're presented as a Senator are actually the real numbers. They're not."
He added that he calls any computer that can make money 'out of thin air' a magic money computer, and said, "It just issues payments."
Advert
Musk maintains that these magic computers are currently within the likes of the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense.
With the numbers supposedly being off by anywhere up to 5%, Musk claims these computers are sending out trillions of dollars.
Of course, the DOGE has been slammed for its accounting before - having to remove billions in supposed savings from its 'wall of receipts'.
Posting his musings on X, Musk referred to these computers as "maybe the biggest scam of all time."
Advert
Opinions were split when Cruz shared the clip on X, with many worried about the idea of these magic money computers.
One said: "Hard to hear. I’ve broken my back for peanuts my whole life and have never received any magic money. I’ve sure paid into it, though. I’ve also been hammered by the IRS. Maybe I should’ve had pronouns and clicked the right boxes."
Another added: "This is just mind-blowing info. It goes to show how deeply the government is corrupt (indeed, the rabbit hole of corruption is deep), and we are not even at the end of the tunnel yet. This is the reason those organizations are fighting back—they are losing big time."
One of Musk's critics chimed in: "He also ‘revealed’ that we provided $50M in condoms to Gaza and that 200-year-olds were getting SS checks, both of which were lies. Why do we believe anything he says?”
Advert
Someone else concluded: "Yeah, more unfettered lies from Ted Cruz. If this was true, it would be the biggest scandal in America right now. It's probably just used normally and is probably been used since Obama, even through Trump 1.0.”
Others said he's simply highlighted Modern Monetary Theory, which is based on the idea that governments don't need to worry about debt because they can pay interest by simply printing more money.
Democrats have often championed MMT, effectively landing on the idea that a government borrowing from its own central bank doesn't need to repay its debt because it owns the bank and that bank has no claim against the government.
The idea of a magic money computer might not be the big reveal the DOGE was hoping it would be, but either way, we'd like to know how we get our hands on one.