They might believe that they are, or might publicly claim that they are. That doesn't mean that they are. It should be pretty clear that, if they intend to be honest state servants just trying to make things more efficient and less expensive, they're doing a pretty bad job of it. They are already fudging their savings numbers to make it look 3+ orders of magnitude bigger than it is, and even the savings that they did find has mostly been short-term savings that have obvious, real, negative long-term consequences primarily for Americans in America and little consequence for anyone else.

What DOGE is doing is like getting up at 5 AM and sealing off the gas line to your furnace, then claiming that you saved a big chunk of your family's monthly finances, when in reality your heating bill is 1/100th the cost of your rent or mortgage, and you're going to be pretty sad that your furnace doesn't work when the winter comes, and you're going to have to pay a professional to un-break your heat, probably a lot more than you saved to begin with. And pissing off your whole family in the meantime.

Even in an alternate reality where Musk and Trump have genuinely good intentions to reform waste and corruption (narrator: they don't), it would be hard to imagine a worse way of going about it.

You should go check out early Sam Bankman-Fried interviews. Dude was super altruistic.

Hah, you do realize that joker was a product of the left, and he was spewing all the right words that the left likes to hear? He tried to invest in Elon's companies, and Elon refused because he could smell the fraud from a mile out.

Pick one of the DOGE employees and try to articulate what fraud they are trying to commit for themselves?

While you appear to want a hyper partisan discussion, that wasn’t my point. The issue is that saying the right things doesn’t mean someone has good motives or will do good things. SBF talked a lot about altruism and doing good, and people across the board believed him. The real problem is that being good at using the right language can cover up bad behavior.

As for the DOGE folks, I didn’t say they’re committing fraud. I just think a slick PR video shouldn’t be taken at face value. A little skepticism is healthy, especially when there’s hype and money involved.

They've exempted themselves from standard accountability tools like FOIA, so we can't really look into what they're doing. Their position is that the public has no right to that level of visibility.

Actually, there is a partisan distinction that I am trying to make here, so I guess I can't not sound partisan. And the distinction is this:

The left gets too hung up on morality. So, they are prone to trusting slick talkers like SBF or Newsom, who say the right things and use the right language, with no actual substance.

Now, as to the DOGE folks, they have presumably given up their lucrative businesses/careers, and joined this effort to help the nation (according to them). Can you atleast give me a theorical story about how one of these individuals could have a sinister plan to defraud the american people?

If they are doing forensics on govt finances, I am not sure what is there to FOIA. Plus, they are publishing extensive data on doge.gov. Nevertheless, in principle, doge shouldn't be exempt from FOIA.

Your first sentence goes right with Elon's 'Compassion is bad'. That we must first come from a place of immorality/no compassion. Crazy talk.

And ah yes, working for the richest man on earth is now 'giving up your career'. What an Orwellian starting point to your argument. Together your two points are a friggin dystopia, you realize that right? The rich are sacrificing for the good of cutting the social contract/safety net of the poor, government must be cruel and immoral. Crazy talk.

They changed how they publish on doge.gov when people called out that their claims were bullshit on the largest denominated savings listed. Please explain why changing to release less information than they originally did because it was being used to make them accountable is actually better.