The Department of Government Efficiency has already earned an official verification badge on Elon Musk's social media platform X... even though it will likely never deserve it (and certainly doesn't now).
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The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to reduce government waste and is supposed to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, does not (yet) exist. In fact, it may never officially exist.
When Donald Trump announced that he wanted to put two of his biggest supporters in charge of the project, he was specific in stating that “the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside the Government*.” (*emphasis added)
That makes sense, because it seems unlikely that Musk in particular has any interest in having to comply with government ethics and conflict of interest rules that would jeopardize the billions of dollars in government contracts or subsidies his companies get.
In other words, DOGE is as much an official government entity as the “Department of Me Sitting on the Couch and Watching Football on Sundays” (DOMSOTCAWFOS).
And yet, somehow, on the social media platform X, the DOGE account, which was created earlier this week and has already amassed 1.7 million followers, has “earned” a gray checkmark, which “indicates that an account represents a government/multilateral organization or a government/multilateral official.”
According to the platform’s rules, “Eligible government organizations at the national level may include: Main executive office accounts, agency accounts overseeing specific areas of policy, main embassy and consulate accounts, and parliamentary or equivalent institutional and committee accounts.”
DOGE meets none of these qualifications… because it’s not a thing yet.
So how did it get the checkmark?
Just to venture a guess, maybe it’s because Musk spent $44 billion a couple of years ago to buy himself one of the world’s largest bullhorns and, since then, has used it as a propaganda tool for Trump and other Republicans, and to advance his own political agenda.
Now, whether or not the DOGE account gets a checkmark that misleads people into thinking that it is an official government entity or not may seem like a small thing, but it illustrates the kind of power Musk has… and uses.
The entrepreneur, who has a highly negative view of traditional news outlets, has bragged that his platform is the world’s number one source of news and believes it should replace actual journalism.
This is something everybody should find problematic.
Because, when you put it all together, this means that Musk wants to have control over the “news” that people in the US and elsewhere consume.
That is bad enough. However, it’s even worse when you consider that the billionaire has an extreme political agenda and shows very little restraint when it comes to spreading misinformation and propaganda to advance it.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
