It seems that SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, is happily helping himself to government contracts while cancelling others in the name of cutting “waste”.
It’s no secret that the Trump administration is stunningly corrupt. We already knew that from the first administration which saw an obscene number of irregularities throughout – which partly explains all the lawsuits that came out after. Anyone with any level of common sense would’ve seen that this sort of corruption would get replayed if he got his tiny hands on power again – which sadly happened.
What is taking a lot of people off guard, however, was just how quickly Trump 2.0 is speedrunning corruption and evil activities. This includes the gutting of NOAA, the attempted abolition of the Department of Education, or sending inflation through the roof by pushing multiple trade wars and suggesting that it would be a good idea to have political interference in the decisions to raise and lower interest rates. I could go on for several paragraphs with examples, really. The real question at this point is if this only took place over the course of weeks, is America even going to survive the full four years.
Of course, one of the methods that the Trump administration claims would end corruption would be to eliminate unelected bureaucrats and political insiders from the system to make government more “accountable” to voters. Of course, this was said without a shred of knowledge about how government, you know, actually works, but this is Trump we are talking about. Must be a day that ends in a “Y”. As if to really drive home the point that every accusation is a confession, Trump recently brought Elon Musk, an unelected bureaucrat who is basically the ultimate political insider at this point, on camera to “explain” (and I use the term VERY liberally) how he and his DOGE cronies are “eliminating” government waste and end the corruption. It was quite surreal and you really couldn’t make that up.
One of the things Musk said in that presser was that everything about what he is doing is fully transparent for the public (it is obviously not especially given their efforts to avoid FOIA requests by, in part, intentionally avoiding the use of Slack). Yet, for Musk, if there is anything that is considered a conflict of interest, it would likely get out in the open anyway. For that last point, he may have inadvertently been right somehow – and at breakneck speeds no less.
Reports quickly surfaced shortly after about how Musk is happily helping himself to government contracts for his businesses all the while cancelling other contracts at the same time. From Alternet:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — by far the wealthiest person on the planet with a net worth in excess of nearly $380 billion — is now benefiting from new government contracts while simultaneously terminating other contracts.
That’s according to policy analyst Will Stancil, who obtained a filing purportedly from a federal grant database showing that SpaceX was awarded a $38.8 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) this week. That contract is for “research and development in the physical, engineering and life sciences,” and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is listed as the contracting office on file.
“Just got a tip from a guy at the FAA,” Stancil tweeted. “You’ll never believe who is still getting new government contracts while all the contracts at the Department of Education and USAID and other agencies are being nuked from orbit.”
The apparent new contract for SpaceX comes on the heels of a recent ABC News report delving into how Musk’s multiple businesses have received billions of dollars in federal contracts even as representatives of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) are terminating contracts throughout multiple agencies. Over the course of former President Joe Biden’s administration alone, SpaceX accumulated roughly $3.7 billion worth of federal contracts between fiscal years 2021 and 2024.
At the same time, Musk’s team has claimed credit for terminating roughly $1 billion in federal contracts since President Donald Trump gave him carte blanche to make steep cuts to federal spending. This includes approximately $270 million from cutting off more than 100 contracts just in the last week, according to DOGE’s official social media account.
Now who could’ve seen that one coming?
There are reporters who rightfully ask what happens if there is a government contract that one of Musk’s businesses – be it X/Twitter, SpaceX, or Tesla – could benefit from. Would Musk recuse himself from the decision making process? In truth, the answer is “probably not”. At this point, blatant corruption is the Trump administration brand. It’s not really just a problem or part of the administration, rampant corruption is the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency. Shadow president, Musk, is all too happy to take advantage of the situation for his own personal benefit.
Of course, this whole situation affects everyone. It partly explains why so many other corporations are desperately trying to kiss the Trump ring. For instance, Google removing holidays celebrating diversity of any kind and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and even going to the extreme of blocking all reviews criticizing the decision.
In another example, the LA Times was caught completely rewriting op-eds to appease the Trump administration. This as the Washington Post was busted actively blocking criticisms of Trump.
The bottom line is this, companies operating in the US are going so far as to completely alter reality to an image that is suitable for the thin-skinned president. Any criticism is stamped out and any decision Trump makes is quickly adhered to – regardless of the obvious pettiness. They want to stay in Trumps good graces to, at the very least, mitigate the damaging implications of living in an American dictatorship and you falling out of favour of dear leader. As TechDirt notes, if these changes get people killed, well, so be it:
The admission that he “might get stuff wrong” would be commendable if we were talking about minor errors. But Musk isn’t making small, easily correctible mistakes. He’s consistently wrong about massive, consequential issues in ways that cause real, irreversible damage. It’s gotten so bad that people have started keeping a grim tally: the Elon Musk death toll. (When people start tracking the body count from your “mistakes,” maybe it’s time to reconsider your information-sharing strategy.)
But here’s the thing that makes this situation truly dangerous: It’s not just that Musk is wrong. Being wrong is, after all, a deeply human trait. We all suffer from confirmation bias — that tendency to believe things that confirm what we already think. I do it, you do it, everyone does it.
But Musk? Well, Musk has turned confirmation bias into an extreme sport, with a playing field littered with bodies. I would say it’s confirmation-bias-on-steroids, but given recent revelations, perhaps confirmation-bias-on-ketamine is more apt.
