Elon Musk is bringing receipts to substantiate his claims of large-scale fraud in the American government, undermining claims from detractors as he rides a wave of popular support for President Donald Trump and a government overhaul.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Elon Musk has attracted its fair share of critics, though the agenda of dramatically downsizing government itself appears to have overshadowed the negative press and public suspicion of Musk.

Over the first month of the Trump presidency, DOGE has torn through federal agencies seeking instances of fraud, waste, abuse and other non-necessary expenditures hoping to dramatically reduce the scope of the federal government. The department has yet to post a comprehensive list of savings, but its website currently promises “receipts coming over the weekend.” So far, however, the department has already shown hard documentation of apparent fraud and waste via its X account.

Thus far, the agency has largely taken aim at executive branch agencies and has yet to post any workforce data on Congress or the Judiciary. But the executive branch agencies make up a substantive part of the federal workforce and payroll, accounting for more than 2.2 million employees and an annual expenditure of just over $211 billion.

Over the weekend, the department published its initial reports outlining the scope of federal agency expenditures and regulations, estimating that 18.5 federal regulations existed for each law Congress approved.

A change in approach

Speaking on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast on Monday, Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, highlighted that Musk had managed to undercover more information on wasteful spending than Congress because of flaws in the process of oversight hearings.

"So the thing that we're hearing is Elon Musk is doing forensic accounting investigation into these programs. These programs can't defend themselves from computer programs that will burrow into the financial transactions," he said. "If Congress asked for a hearing, you know what? You and I both know. What happens is the bureaucrats show up with redacted information that is essentially not informational and or they don't tell us the full story."

"And so we can ask for hearing after hearing, but when you have forensic accounting resources, and you go in and you find where these checks are going, where this money's going, you can actually track these things down, gather the proof, and prove to the American people that their money is being wasted," he contended.

Savings thus far

The total amount of money DOGE has saved through slashing programs and payroll remains unclear as of press time, though reports are expected in the near future. A cursory glance at the agency’s X account, however, shows the figure to be well in the billions, with more than $1 billion alone coming from eliminated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.

After initially tackling flak from legacy media over his claims of fraud at his initial press conference without providing paper evidence, Musk later posted screenshots of the Social Security database to substantiate his assertions that 150-year-olds were receiving Social Security.

“According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” he posted.

One user, in response, highlighted that the total number of eligible recipients in the list neared 400 million, despite the U.S. having a population of roughly 60 million fewer people.

“Yes, there are FAR more ‘eligible’ Social Security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history,” Musk replied.

Easily the nation's most prominent entitlement program, Social Security alone accounts for a sizeable portion of the nation's budget and lawmakers estimate the weekly losses to be in staggering amounts. Notably, an Office of the Inspector General report from 2023 that the New York Post highlighted on Monday previously found 18.9 million numbers registered to persons born in 1920 or earlier, but noted that most were not currently receiving payments.

"But $2 billion a week, and I'll emphasize that again, $2 billion a week is what I'm being told might be going out and in fraudulent Social Security benefits to people that don't even have social security numbers," Kennedy said. "And you think, I mean Democrats are trying to protest this effort and even one of those facts that I've just given, if one of them is true, let alone all of them, then absolutely I support this Doge effort because taxpayer dollars are sacred. We should not be spending them on programs that are even nominally wasteful, let alone outright wasteful."

Democrats terrified

The agency has Democrats up in arms, fearing that Musk will abuse his access to government records and threaten some of their favorite programs. Currently attracting opposition is DOGE’s efforts to review the IRS. Musk initiated those plans in response to an X poll showing overwhelming support for reviewing the government’s primary agency for collecting revenue.

CNN reported Monday that DOGE employee Gavin Kliger will soon secure access to taxpayer data at the IRS through its Integrated Data Retrieval System.

"It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it. DOGE will continue to shine a light on the fraud they uncover as the American people deserve to know what their government has been spending their hard earned tax dollars on,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields told the outlet.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., on Monday took aim at Musk for "rummaging through your personal sh*t" in response to DOGE's access to IRS data.

"Bruh, if I wanted to rummage through random personal shit, I could have done that at PAYPAL. Hello??? Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as “ALIVE” when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem," Musk retorted. "Obviously. Some of these people would have been alive before America existed as a country. Think about that for a second …"

Leftists in media, both traditional and social — particularly activist celebrities — have taken to attacking him for everything from his personal life to attempts to suppress the stock of Tesla.  

Trump in the black and DOGE rides the coattails 

Those findings come as the public appears supportive of the Trump administration, thus far, with 55% of registered voters expressing approval in the latest Napolitan News Survey. A further 43% disapproved of the administration. Notably, voter priorities appear to be with Trump’s keynote campaign promises on the economy and immigration. Thirty-one percent said the economy was the most important issue while 22% chose immigration. The remainder were largely divided among other issues.

An earlier CBS News survey, moreover, found Trump with a 53% approval rating, while 70% expressed the belief that he was keeping his campaign promises.

DOGE has embraced the notion of a popular mandate for its efforts, highlighting on its website that “the people voted for major reform.” Indeed, some data seems to suggest that the public backs DOGE as part of the Trump administration’s efforts. A recent Trafalgar/InsiderAdvantage poll found that 49% approve of Musk’s performance at DOGE while 44% disapproved.

A recent Newsweek focus group, moreover, found overwhelming support among participants for the new department’s efforts. "These swing voters are delighted by Musk's Trump-endorsed government housecleaning. The prospects of a looming constitutional crisis is completely inconceivable to them,” Engagious President and focus group moderator Rich Thau said.

‘Nervousness’ in Congress, but optimism

Among the Republicans in Congress, some lawmakers have raised questions about the political blowback from Musk’s handling of the overview. Speaking on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast on Friday, Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., admitted there was “nervousness” in the conference over the prospective Democratic attacks, but that Republicans were optimistic that they could substantially reduce the deficit as a result of his findings, without cutting any services.

“I think Elon Musk has shown, and he's, he's talked about, you know, being able to come out and and show, you know, payments, people getting paid for Social Security or Medicaid, and, you know, they're either dead or duplicate the social security numbers and things like that,” he said. “Why would the Democrats go down and defend that? Why wouldn't they welcome that all that money is money that could be spent actually helping people who aren't ripping the system off, if we were to be able to find it and root it out?”

“And so I do think that a lot of Republicans, we met with the Speaker just this week, and he really talked about that, that Elon Musk is saying, ‘look, I think I can find a lot of money in the system where we aren't even going to have to cut now, we're going to cut government,’” he went on. “We need to cut back on the size and scope of government.”

Musk certainly has yet to wear out his welcome with MAGA diehards in Congress as well, for whom his efforts have thus far only validated their assertions about broad abuse in government.

"Get back to our Constitution and common sense"

“I want to say that what Elon Musk has been able to expose has been eye opening for every single person in this country. There are Democrats who want to caterwaul and yell and scream and, you know, rend their clothing, rip their hair out, things like that, because they're so upset about this,” said Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., on the same program.

"99% of your average person out there with a lick of sense knows that what we've been funding and what we've been doing around the world is bad. Now we can look at an agency like USAID, and we can say it's a 50 to $60 billion agency. And maybe that's not that much money. I think it's a massive amount of money" she said.

"But it also, what you have to look at is the kind of rot that it was, that it was actually sending out through grants and through funding, what they were doing in other countries, overthrowing countries, undermining their culture, undermining their stability and certainty," she continued.

"It's just amazing, and so much of it goes back to this woke ideology that just really needs to be ripped out by the roots. We need to get back to our Constitution and common sense.”