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Elon Musk is Donald Trump’s efficiency czar, the ketamine-snorting oligarch appointed to the ridiculously named DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a name chosen to put a smile on the face of edgy meme lords on X. As part of his new “job” Musk has been given broad and sweeping access to a diverse range of government offices and institutions as part of a drive for a more “efficient” use of government funds.
In theory, this is a good idea, as nobody wants their hard-earned tax dollars going to waste. Most people can get behind the idea that some things the government spends money on are unnecessary or wasteful — the problem is it’s hard to agree on just what counts as wasteful. Some might contend that spending several million dollars so Trump can attend a Super Bowl is wasteful, for example, and worthy of DOGE’s attention.
People have taken to X, Elon Musk’s social media platform which he uses as his own personal mouthpiece, to speak out against President Trump’s choice to attend the annual football event. While there are some who voice concern about the added cost to the taxpayer and rightly call it out as unnecessary spending, others speak out about the additional effort, strain, and cost to fans of the great game with Trump’s appearance at the event.
Unlike a normal Super Bowl, attendees will be subjected to massively increased security measures adding hours of time and stress to what should be a smooth sporting experience as the Secret Service will have to do everything it needs to do to protect the president. Many on the platform contend that presidents don’t attend the sporting event for precisely this reason: The additional cost of providing their security and the high chances of their presence ruining the experience of ardent fans.
Others directly address the issue of government waste which Musk is employed to solve and which Donald Trump has spoken about endlessly. Talk about hypocrisy…
And it doesn’t end here. Trump’s first run as president saw him rack up some serious golf time at considerable cost to the U.S. taxpayer, so it’s not at all a surprise to see him return to form in his second term. An appearance at the Super Bowl is, for some, the epitome of governmental waste. But for Trump, actions and words don’t need to match, and he, of course, is always justified in everything that he does. But since this is the man who promised to lower the cost of living for Americans, only to exemplify the existing numbers, his adding to the woes of taxpayers isn’t shocking or new.
Ideally, Musk should be infuriated by this careless and unnecessary waste of money. But the billionaire is a MAGA through and through.
Unfortunately for taxpayers, Musk has been using his new powers and department in ways people have called “dirty and illegal” while legal experts contend that he has actually already broken the law. It doesn’t seem as if Trump or Musk are at all interested in using their powers to prevent waste or misuse of funds — it seems like Musk is to be wielded like a weapon to coerce various parts of the governmental apparatus of the USA to conform to Trump’s plans instead. A sad day for democracy.