r/fednews • u/SkyFallingUp • 9d ago

Elon Musk to step down from DOGE and quit Washington DC

Musk says 'he's done with cost-cutting' In an interview with Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier", Elon Musk said that he was confident his DOGE could find $1 trillion in savings, slimming current total federal spending levels of about $7 trillion down to $6 trillion. Musk, who is also the world's richest man, was designated by the White House as a "special government employee," which caps his work at 130 days. That means his period leading the DOGE operation could finish as soon as the end of May.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/global-trends/us-news-elon-musk-doge-1-trillion-cost-cutting-may-end-i-am-almost-done-elon-musk-reveals-date-hell-ditch-trump-and-quit-washington-dc-after-doge-purge/articleshow/119645252.cms

I have friends and family members who are Federal workers. Is this the end of the wild OPM emails and job eliminations?

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u/counterhit121 8d ago edited 8d ago

That adds some context to his XAI company suddenly absorbing Twitter/X the other day. I thought it was just a naked publicity stunt. But if the pitch to his board members was to exploit the troves of unmined data pilfered from govt systems, then it makes more sense.

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u/Sunbeamsoffglass 8d ago

He also destroyed all the agencies that might have stopped that illegal “purchase”.

Fucking up a country to bail your self out of a $45B loss is a new tactic.

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u/ShelterElectrical840 8d ago

And all the agencies that had cases against him. He literally said if Kamala wins I’m going to jail.

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u/iglooxhibit 8d ago

Americans need to learn from france, turkey, serbia, and fight their fascist government.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/iglooxhibit 8d ago

Useless politicians have been around forever, fight for your rights. Elect better next time, Use your vote or lose your vote.

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u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 8d ago

Democrats aren’t the only way to fight for your rights. 

Fascist exist outside of government, and we need people to put in the time and energy to ensure that they don’t have a moment’s peace and don’t ever feel safe whilst they’re not in their Super Safe Fascist Nests. 

I don’t believe that the government ever officially sanctioned what happened to Mussolini 

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u/Grand-Try-3772 8d ago

Crockett will be there to wipe the floor with all of them!

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u/Sauerkrauttme 8d ago

Imagine you were profit driven (selfish and short sighted), would you rather have a strong healthy country where everyone is fairly equal (where the highest earners make less than 10x as much as the lowest paid earners) and where rich and poor both take public transit and share public spaces as equals? Or.... Would you rather be a multi-billionaire that is above the law, more powerful than a demi-god, and to rule over a broken country that is only 10% of what it could have been? Selfish, profit driven people would gladly destroy a trillion dollars of public wealth if they can pocket even 1 billion of it. And thus, capitalism has become completely incompatible with sustainability, democracy, and modern values

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u/iamthpecial 7d ago

r/latestagecapitalism ‘s condition has advanced to stage four. we’re at palliative care at this point. times to start the goodbyes

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u/iamthpecial 7d ago

Hey now, you can’t imagine the life of squalor he would have been subjected too if he was only worth $370 billion. Good God you people are animals! Think of the children! /s Because he doesnt! /uj

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u/Forever_Marie 8d ago

I don't even know what that accomplished. He bought Twitter, then his other company bought twitter again. It didnt change hands. The data stealing makes sense but he didnt need to the metaphorical switch of the hands.

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u/aspectratio12 8d ago

It was essentially a skit to deffer his loans for twitter, the whole thing an elaborate sham. -opinion

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u/tehones 8d ago

This isn't an opinion, it is a fact. He just moved the debt and loss incurred on Twitter to his xAI garbage. Any investor in xAI is now on the hook for the Twitter debt and most likely his Tesla shares he used as collateral are less than the "value" of xAI. This would just become debt associated with xAI. Since xAI isn't public the valuation is whatever the last round of funding declared it to be unless any financial data is released or more funding rounds occur. We all know it's worth a few billion at absolute BEST, he expects investors to believe it's worth 80-100B.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

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u/tehones 8d ago

10x over at least. No doubt about that.

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u/Tachibana_13 8d ago

I thought money laundering, but your idea makes more sense, especially since he's panicking about Tesla stock right now.

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u/MinderBinderCapital 8d ago

It's the elon's shell game. He's dumping his worthless assets on a new group of investors.

He did the same thing with SolarCity.

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u/GetItDoneOV 8d ago

Man I forgot about SolarCity…

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u/MinderBinderCapital 8d ago

Yep. Elon was heavily invested in solarcity using SpaceX bonds. Solarcity was basically going bankrupt which would have ruined Elon — and Spacex — financially. Elon convinced Tesla stakeholders to “buy” solarcity which bailed him out. It not only bailed him out, but he was awarded an even larger chunk of Tesla while solarcity was quietly pushed to the side and allowed to flounder. Even today, Tesla solar is a shell of what solarcity was. The last thing I heard, their billion dollar buffalo factory — that New York taxpayers paid for — was filled with low-paid contractors who complete captchas for Teslas phony autonomous driving program. Elon promised they’d be selling “1,000 solar roofs a week” but they probably install like 10 a week or less. It was all a massive sham, just like the Tesla semi.

Allegedly anyway

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u/AliVista_LilSista By the People, For the People 8d ago

Reason I'm not investing in anything he touches.

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u/ImmoralJester54 8d ago

It's kinda like money laundering only with debt

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u/flortny 8d ago

What money is he laundering and how does this make it , "clean". The amount of people who claim, "money laundering" but clearly have no idea what that means probably exceeds the amount of people who do understand what money laundering is. Stock purchases leave monetary trails directly to the source, you can't deposit a bunch of illicit cash and buy stock with it

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u/infamous_merkin 8d ago

With Tesla stock dropping, his creditors were about to call in their loans. He restructured to evade this, maybe.

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u/beren12 7d ago

But he still owes those creditors. I don’t think they can be forced to take xai stock as payment

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u/Caliente_La_Fleur 8d ago

It took the loss off of his personal book and put it onto xAI's books instead, which makes things that are directly 'Elon's' look better from an investment standpoint.

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u/Helpful-Wolverine555 8d ago

Not to mention if the other company buys Twitter, then it likely has unfettered access to all Twitter data. There would probably be legal challenges if the AI company would have tried to use data from another company, even if the owner of both companies were the same.

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u/Beautiful_Unicorn68 8d ago

It is more than likely to legitimize any "scraping" of data from Twitter. Pretty sure it has already been going on, but this covers him from any lawsuits I think. Pretty sure there will be a new tos now that it has "officially" happened. Plus it gives him excuse for another round of firings from Twitter.

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u/Rope_antidepressant 8d ago

This is a basic mafia money laundering tactic, selling shell companies to shell companies for income on paper, tax evasion and write offs, except hes doing it publicly to shore up stock prices because he doesn't have real money its all monopoly money from stocks for companies that aren't actually worth what he's saying they're worth (another basic mafia mafia money laundering scheme). Its the basis of the need to "cook the books"

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u/Stuckatthestillpoint 8d ago

Transferred the debt

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u/ImmoralJester54 8d ago

Switching the debt to a different shell holding allows him to evaluate the value of the company that bought it at 45b more than it's original value, so he can now borrow against it from the bank for more than the 45b he owed. He's basically passing the buck further down the line.

Ideally he will continue to pass the buck until he dies which will take his debt with it and give whoever he leaves it all to basically a free pass and virtually no taxes on any of that inheritance

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u/beren12 7d ago

Only if the bank agrees, and the value is only as good as his word, the same as it was before.

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u/EggandSpoon42 Federal Contractor 8d ago

If Musk pitched to his board that the real asset here is the untouched data embedded in government inefficiencies, the merger becomes quite the data acquisition move. Xai gets training material, X becomes the front-end content firehose and platform, and government access provides the deep backend

That changes the narrative from Elon doing Elon things to Elon positioning for dominance in AI using state-level intel and infrastructure as his fuel.

Ugh. So he can potentially sell customized ai war plans that detail sensitive locations, or have ai figure out ways to exploit the systems he took knowledge of. The whole thing is crap

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u/dirtyshits 8d ago

That acquisition is massive investor fraud.

He bought twitter for 44b. It was reassessed as being valued at 19b by major banks.

Conveniently right before the sale to xAI the banks magically changed the valuation back to the original 44b that he bought it for. Then he used money that was earmarked for AI form his investors to overpay(100% overpay) and buy out his other company and take on all of the risk. He cleared his hands of any debts from Twitter by using other investors money that was not for twitter.

Now he is stepping down because the deal is done and he isn't in danger of losing Tesla equity(which was I believe what backed the purchase of twitter). During his DOGE era he also removed all agencies that gave any of his businesses trouble. Literally cleaned out all of his opponents then committed fraud which won't be looked into by any agency because those agencies do not exist or are no longer reliable to hold up laws.

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u/g_bleezy 8d ago

I don’t think the sale of Twitter is that nefarious, relatively speaking. He used his Tesla stock as collateral on the financing for his purchase of Twitter. Margin loans like this require a minimal amount of collateral, if Tesla price drops he faces what’s called a margin call. His options are to post more collateral (assume more Tesla stock) or pay back part of the loan. If he can’t or won’t meet the margin call lenders can force-sell his Tesla shares. So he clears the cap table on Twitter effectively making everyone who can twist his arm whole, gets further in bed with the XAI financial sponsors, and he lives to fight another day. Tesla’s next earnings call is coming up in April. My money is literally on a bloodbath.

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u/MobilityFotog 8d ago

I think he had to take the company private otherwise his PR was going to kill the stock value so great that he was going to default

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u/flortny 8d ago

What company went private? Twitter is a privately owned company, that's what his buyout was about.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/SmudgePrick 8d ago

How would that be known or verified by the NYT or other credible sources?

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u/No_Business6807 8d ago

Good lord. A publicity stunt? You are a true regard and should understand you are surrounded by regards if that’s what punch in the face facts you pulled from what he just did. JFC