Co-President Elon Musk went on Fox News Tuesday night to whine about protests at Tesla car dealerships across the country, claiming he has no idea why anyone would be mad at him, since he's just a benevolent guy trying to help Americans.
"It's really come as such a shock to me that there's this level of hatred and violence from the left. I always thought that the left, that Democrats, were supposed to be the party of empathy, the party of caring," Musk said in a Fox News appearance Tuesday night. "I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things. … This doesn't make any sense. I think there are larger forces at work."
Of course, Musk has done extremely harmful things since he bankrolled President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign and wormed his way into a nebulous and powerful role within the federal government.
Through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has convinced Trump to ignore the law and cut congressionally approved funding, shutter government agencies, and make it harder for Americans to obtain their Social Security benefits.
The moves have already had tangibly harmful effects.
For example, his role in virtually shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development—which a federal judge ruled on Tuesday violated the law—has led people in impoverished countries to die, including an 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who were receiving HIV treatment through a USAID program, The New York Times reported. Shuttering USAID and the programs it ran to feed the starving and treat the sick could cause hundreds of thousands of people to die from hunger or diseases. And those diseases could spread to the United States if they are not kept under control.
An elderly couple walks down a hall on Nov. 6, 2015, in Easton, Pennsylvania.
As part of DOGE’s push, the Social Security Administration announced new changes on Tuesday that will force elderly and disabled people to verify their identities online rather than over the phone. If elderly people are unable to use the online system, they'll be forced to go to a Social Security office in-person—which Social Security officials say is a major hardship for older Americans who might be too frail to travel or cannot drive.
Even worse is that DOGE is cutting 7,000 jobs and shuttering dozens of Social Security offices, which will make recipients who need to verify their identities have to travel further or face long wait times due to staffing shortages.
“DOGE is closing nearly 50 Social Security offices across the country—including in White Plains—and now they’re limiting phone support,” Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said in a post on X. “Make no mistake, this is a full-blown attack on Social Security. Elon Musk is trying to take away benefits you earned.”
Musk has also falsely claimed multiple times that dead people are receiving Social Security benefits. And that lie has led DOGE to accuse living people of being dead and cancel their Social Security and Medicare benefits.
One such person—82-year-old Ned Johnson—spoke to The Seattle Times about the hell being accused of being dead has caused him. Johnson's incorrect death accusation led the government to take back $5,201 from his bank account, and canceled his Medicare benefits.
From The Seattle Times’ report:
What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.
In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It’s one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the [Associated Press] called “a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk’s budget-cutting advisers.”
It was like a Depression-era scene, he said, with a queue 50-deep jockeying for the attentions of two tellers. The employees were kind but beleaguered.
“They are so understaffed down there,” he said. “They think the office is about to be closed down, and they don’t know where they’re going to go. It feels like the agency’s being gutted.”
Musk has also pushed cuts to medical research into new treatments for diseases like cancer and diabetes. The cuts have led to layoffs and hiring freezes at major research institutions.
What’s more, Musk's DOGE has also tried to fire tens of thousands of federal workers, including thousands of veterans, with tens of thousands of firings on the way.
Those terminations have impacted (or soon will impact) the livelihoods of public servants who earn pennies compared with Musk, the richest man in the world, who is leading the charge to fire them. In fact, many of the fired federal workers are struggling to obtain unemployment benefits as they look for new work. Why? Musk's DOGE lied that the workers were being fired for performance reasons, which would prevent them from obtaining those benefits.
And firing that many government employees could impact the administration of government programs—including Social Security, Medicaid, and veterans’ health care.
And to top off the harm Musk has caused, economists say the DOGE-led cuts could help plunge the U.S. economy into a recession, which would cause pain for millions of Americans.
So yes, Musk has done so many harmful things. Truth be told, it’s a wonder the protests against him aren’t bigger.
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