Not everyone is convinced that Elon Musk is up to the task of making America 'great' again, and while the world's richest man has vowed to slash government spending while making US citizens better off than ever, he's got some work to do.
While Musk's role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency might pitch him as the USA's very own white knight, one financial reporter has mocked the whole idea - claiming that the tech billionaire is saving us mere 'pennies'.
Speaking to CNN, Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball laughed at the idea Musk could give every American supposed DOGE 'dividends' that could be worth thousands.
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It comes as Musk suggests that the money earned from cutting back foreign aid and trimming the fat in terms of the federal workforce is already paying off big.
MAGA investment manager James Fishback said the idea of a DOGE dividend came to him in a dream and soon picked up traction when Musk said he would 'check' with the POTUS about its viability. Trump confirmed this and said he might consider giving Americans back 20% of those savings.
Discussing the whole situation, CNN host Jim Sciutto said: “His policies upcoming, in the view of economists, are inflationary. A tax cut is inflationary and tariffs are inflationary, so how does he square that circle?"
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With polls showing an overwhelming 62% think the President hasn't reduced the price of daily goods enough, Ball accuses the dividend idea as a way of diverting attention away from his campaign promises: "I think that those are the numbers in the poll that pose the most risk to Trump going forward.
"This idea that he's focused on the wrong things because, look, a lot of Americans bought the idea during the election that the reason you're suffering, the reason you're struggling is because we're spending all this money on foreign countries, foreign aid, giving away the store, being played for suckers, sending it all to Ukraine."
Crunching the numbers, Ball added: "The amounts that Elon Musk is getting out of this DOGE, they are pennies compared to the federal budget. They're not enough to send thousands of dollars to every American."
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She said that the idea that taking money away from USAID would make the lives of the average American better "doesn't seem to be bearing fruit."
Sciutto suggested that prices will continue to rise as we're forced to pay for tariffs on imports, while Bloomberg debunked Musk's claims that the DOGE has already saved $55 billion. The figure is reported to actually be just $16.6 billion, while there's the embarrassing situation where an $18 million contract saving was wrongly reported as $18 billion. Musk has already said, "We'll make mistakes," but with him taking credit for closing two agencies that were shuttered during the Biden administration, it's all a bit awkward right now.