During the fukakta media event that they called a “Cabinet Meeting” silver-spoon Billionaire Elon Musk stood up and laughing proclaimed...
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“So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola prevention,” Musk said Wednesday. “I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored the Ebola prevention immediately.”
Very simply, that was a fucking lie.
But that claim is being roundly disputed by current and former officials inside the agency. Initiatives to combat Ebola and other diseases “have been gutted,” they told The Washington Post.
“There have been no efforts to ‘turn on’ anything in prevention” of Ebola and other diseases, according to Nidhi Bouri, who served as a senior USAID official during the Biden administration.
“The full spectrum — the investments in disease surveillance, the investments in what we mobilize … moving commodities, supporting lab workers — that capacity is now a tenth of what it was,” Bouri, who oversaw the agency’s response to health care outbreaks, told the Post.
Other current and former officials also called into question Musk’s assertion Wednesday.
“There was a waiver for Ebola, but USAID funds have never been back online,” one current agency official told the Post. “USAID has been frozen: staff and money.
People who claim to represent our government have a responsibility to inform the public accurately. Certainly, they get to keep secrets and have confidential information that they don’t share — but saying the sky is Green when it’s really Blue is not allowed.
The top five items listed on the DOGE website had to be removed because they were wrong.
DOGE deleted the top five highest savings claims on its “wall of receipts” leaderboard after various news outlets pointed out multiple errors in its calculations, The New York Times’ David Fahrenthold reported Tuesday.
The savings, deleted with no explanation from DOGE or the White House, include: a $232 million cut to the Social Security Administration that actually amounted to only $560,000; an $8 billion cut at Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was actually only $8 million; and three $655 million cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development that ended up being a measly $18 million. These mistakes all seem to be completely avoidable human errors.
These dodgy fuckers can't even count.
Let’s be real, if anyone at any private company — say Starbucks — made a mistake on your order you’d be upset. But if they then went on to blatantly lie and say they corrected the mistake they shouldn’t have made in the first place when they did no such thing — wouldn’t expect them to be summarily fired?
Would you honestly expect someone who does that — on National TV — to still be doing what they’re doing the next day?
I wouldn’t trust these punks to properly grill me a sandwich at Burger King. [And if you don’t know — that process is automatic once you put the patty on the conveyor belt.]
They’d be gone. Adios. Finito.
But Musk lingers. And continues to lie.
Today, America seems to have lost its ability to tell truth from bullshit. We have no idea which way is up or down.
Is CRT good or bad? Is DEI good or bad? Are there only two sexes? Do leftists hate America? Do vaccines work or not? Is it unusual to have a child die of measles in this day and age? Do some Federal employees not exist?
There are people who ar absolutely certain of all the answers to those questions, and all those people are absolutely incorrect.
Are we still fighting to prevent Ebola or are we not? Now, it’s time for Congress to find out.
Critics said the admission should be considered a scandal that Congress ought to investigate.
"This is a stunning admission that should by itself trigger a Congressional investigation, if we had a Congress," said the popular Bluesky account Internet Hippo.
"No democrat should vote for anything in Congress until Musk is fired and all the federal funding he zeroed out on a whim is restored," added Kelsey Atherton, of the Center for International Policy. "We simply cannot have a democracy when the Executive's zonked-out Vizier moves fast and breaks things he doesn't understand, which is all things, because he's stupid."
"Elon Musk, who calls millions of US federal workers 'incompetent,' says he 'accidentally canceled' Ebola prevention," said writer Adam Schultz.
"Elon is confirming what the WHO told @statnews weeks ago: USAID cuts had an impact on outbreak response on the ground," added STAT editor Jason Ukman.
“'We restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption,' Elon says, flat-out lying to the president’s face," said X user Max Siegal, pointing to a report that shows the funding remains frozen.
"He laughs about it. It's also unclear how he has the legal authority to cancel any spending authorized by Congress," posted journalist Judd Legum.
"Measure twice, cut once," joked actor Diedrich Bader. "Or just set your shop on fire."
"Old enough to remember conservatives absolutely s---ing themselves over even the slightest possibility ebola could hit the US," added the Bluesky account Hellscape Navigator.
"Every day, people who work in FAR LESS high-stakes jobs, stress themselves out bc they want to avoid making mistakes that might negatively impact others," said Bluesky user Maraki Zee. "People take years off their lives from work related anxiety and develop real health issues. And this MFer chuckles like it’s a whoopsie. Enraging!"
"We accidentally fired the guys who take care of nukes," said Don Moynihan, policy professor at the University of Michigan. "We also canned the guys who overlook plane safety. And we continue to stop life-saving aid from getting to the most vulnerable people in the world."
This is bullshit.
And what’s enraging is that it's obvious and ridiculous bullshit. These DOGe’ guys are pathetic and sloppy. They’re a pack of completely incompetent assholes who are walking around saying that dedicated and experienced Federal workers are the incompetent ones.
The same day Musk said this a Federal Judge was ordering the Foreign Aid contracts be honored and paid — because even though he’d already put out a court order for them to do so, they still hadn’t done it. And then Justice John Roberts ordered that restoration be paused.
Feb 26 (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday paused a federal judge's order requiring President
Donald Trump's administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients.
Roberts issued an interim order placing on hold Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali's action that had imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night.
Roberts provided no rationale for the order, known as an administrative stay, which will give the court additional time to consider the administration's more formal request to block Ali's ruling.
Roberts asked for a response from the plaintiffs - organizations that contract with or receive grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - by noon on Friday.
The order came after Trump's administration said in a court filing on Wednesday it had made final decisions terminating most U.S. foreign aid contracts and grants, while maintaining that it cannot meet Ali's court-ordered deadline.
The administration is cutting more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development's foreign aid contracts and over $58 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, a State Department spokesperson said separately, calling the cuts part of Trump's "America First agenda."
The foreign aid funding dispute arose from a pair of lawsuits brought by the aid organizations, alleging that the agencies have illegally frozen all foreign aid payments.
The Trump administration has kept those payments largely frozen despite a February 13 temporary restraining order from Ali that they be released, and multiple subsequent orders that the administration comply, culminating in the Wednesday night deadline.
Also, that same day former USAID employees were given 15 minutes to reclaim their personal property from their desks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency are being given a brief window Thursday and Friday to clear out their workspaces.
USAID placed 4,080 staffers who work across the globe on leave Monday. That was joined by a “reduction in force” that will affect another 1,600 employees, a State Department spokesman said in an emailed response to questions.
If the contracts have not been restored and the employees are cleaning out their desks — then they aren’t fecking preventing Ebola now are they?
Elon is supposed to be -— except for on paper or in court — “in charge” of what DOGe’ is doing. And yet he doesn’t seem to know any of this is happening? He doesn’t even know what is or isn’t happening with Ebola prevention?
Fucking seriously?
And on top of that, everything he’s been doing is Unconstitutional and Illegal. Congress determines the budget. Congress creates agencies and shuts down agencies. Civil Service employees have union protection against being fired without legitimate cause. None of this is being done correctly.
And yet, the MAGAs still voted for this shit. Now they get to eat the consequences.
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