No matter HOW MUCH he CRIES about how REALLY REALLY DIFFICULT it was, Yoda NAILED it...There is no try, only do.

[Miles Archer]

A couple of weeks after his argument with Bessent, Musk gathered reporters in the Roosevelt Room to defend himself, admitting that his latest goal of $1 trillion in taxpayer spending—already down from his initial $2 trillion target—had proved “really, really difficult.”

“We are making as much progress as we can—there’s a lot of inertia in the government,” he told the assembled press. “So it’s, like, it’s not easy. This is—this is a way to make a lot of enemies and not that many friends.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-becoming-latest-government-employee-135000433.html

[Walleye]

1. And the meantime, he's making things so much more difficult for every day Americans. Fuck him.

Don’t whine to me about how you’re trying. When you sold yourself as a genius, wealthy people don’t know how to work. They’ve never had to answer to anybody like most of us do

[Miles Archer]

2. He only missed his boastful target by $1,850,000,000,000. Give him a break. It was really difficult!

The part I won't pretend to understand AT ALL...it's referenced in the excerpt I provided...is how the did the media allow him to do a "bait and switch" on his original boast of "2 TRILLION" in savings, magically down to "1 TRILLION?"

The GOAL was NEVER ONE trillion.

And the media kept pushing out stories of how the "ALLEGED" 150 billion "fell short of his $1 trillion target."

And, yes, we don't actually have PROOF of $150 billion in "savings" because we haven't seen an accurate off-set of expenses versus "savings." The TRUE AMOUNT could very well be a negative number.

[Walleye]

5. And all this fraud they keep talking about, where are the charges who's committing fraud?

According to the right wingers, any government job is a fraud. And any Democrat is a traitor. The news media just follows along.

[Irish_Dem]

3. He is the most hated man in America for good reason.

He destroyed the US govt and made many many Americans miserable.
And will do so for generations.

He is a rat bastard of the highest order.

[Miles Archer]

7. He "did a Trump" on that Atlantic article

Apparently The Atlantic is actually "The Failing Atlantic," and Musk decreed that "Legacy Media" is dead, that it's all propaganda, etc etc etc.

PROBLEM IS that once he steps out of the protective shadow of Trump, even Republicans have no motivation to pretend to "like" him.

One thing he DID accomplish is that even though his particular brand of drug-abusing CosPlay tough guy was never convincing, he's revealed he's even more fragile than Trump in the ego department. He went out there and did the bouncing and prancing at the MAGAt rally (which reportedly led Trump to ask "What the hell is Elon doing?&quot , He went into his K-hole and swung that chainsaw, and...the final straw...wore his cheese head hat to Wisconsin, and no one chuckled.

THE BIGGEST TAKEAWAY I GOT from the "Republicans speak out against Musk under conditions of anonymity" was that when he is in a room with his Gallagher-like props and does his little monkey dance and no one laughs, HE POUTS.

Musk is "at his best"...if you can call it that...when, just like Trump, he is bullying people who are not in a position to fight back (like the "Day One" nonsense he pulled at Twitter, walking in with the kitchen sink in his arms, and the media DID actually fawn over that).

But yeah. Too many headlines about what he and his little hacker wimp army DID behind closed doors for Elon to be "loved" now. That ship has sailed.

[dutch777]

4. Gee it is hard. And I hope resuscitating Tesla is impossible. GM is gaining on it and eLoon trashed the brand.

Please do ride into the sunset in your ugly discolored cybertruck (before the trim falls off and the panels delaminate).

[Walleye]

6. Really why is he even in the United States? He doesn't need us and we certainly don't need him.

[dutch777]

8. Best opportunity to oversell and underdeliver and make $$$. He'd fit in Hungary but not very glamorous there.

And I doubt he'd like to go back to South Africa. His dad kind of trashed the Musk name sleeping with the step daughter and a Black government would not be his preferred flavor. Better get SpaceX up to that Mars mission. He could go and take a few breeding females and his tribe of kids and single handedly colonize the place. Please!?!?!?!

[Walleye]

10. I don't think all wealthy people are perverts, but they're certainly seem to be a lot of them

[ProfessorGAC]

9. He Still Thinks The Goal Is A Trillion?

That's pathetic. He needs to remove 2 zeroes from that, then maybe he'll achieve 50% of his "goal".
At this point, any savings they claim are actually close to zero, with costs incurred to achieve those "savings" offset the saved cash.
They've been lying the whole time.
How much waste & fraud existed was a lie.
How much they'd be able to catch was a lie.
The savings they claimed; a lie.
Finally, Musk's companies aren't paragon of financially efficiency. There are CAR companies that have unit costs lower as a percentage of sales than Tesla & lots of manufacturing firms that do.
There was never a reason to believe that this guy had the skills to increase operational efficiency, or anybody that works for him. His very appointment to this effort was based on a lie.
The whole thing is a sham. They claimed to be going after fraud, when the fraud was the effort.

[Miles Archer]

11. It amazes me that the media goes no further down the rat hole than "he missed his target." No, he didn't.

Musk's "target" was

1). Hobbling agencies with regulatory authority over his businesses, who could investigate him (mission accomplished)
2). "Data Scraping" the government computers and adding the names, Social Security numbers, bank info on millions of Americans (mission accomplished)
3). Stick a shiv between the shoulder blades of his competitors and shift government contracts in his direction (mission accomplished)

So he really did accomplish everything he set out to do. He can use the data in his shiny new database any way he pleases, AND / OR sell it to the highest bidder(s).

And yet, the media still paints the picture of a valiant crusader who did his very best to reduce waste and fraud and sadly fell short.

[ProfessorGAC]

12. You're Obviously Correct

It takes nothing more than simple math to deduce there was never the kind of savings trumpeted.
And, a few minutes of digging to establish he did not have a track record in knowing how to do such things.
A pathetically lazy media

[Miles Archer]

13. Here's a metaphor / example.

I was born and raised about an hour out of Boston. Moved to California when I was 16. Even in the suburbs, there is a Boston LANGUAGE, a Boston ATTITUDE, a Boston way of getting along with others that is unmistakable. We've earned an awful nickname that we've embraced as a badge of honor, "MASSholes." That song the Standells did about "Dirty Water" really IS Boston. The lyrics point to a number of things uniquely Bostonian and drawn from real events.

The Washington DC Government Machine has a LANGUAGE, an ATTITUDE, and a way of getting along that DOOMS anyone to FAILURE if they don't STUDY it and LEARN it before attempting to accomplish ANYTHING in Washington DC.

And, of course, Musk did none of that, and as you said, he walked in knowing nothing and walked out with nothing beyond the items on his TRUE agenda.

[Jacson6]

14. This dude is silly. All he had to do is kick millions off of medicare and medicaid to reach his goal.

Of course, he may have faced the wrath of millions of people.