"It’s worth noting that not all of Musk’s attacks on the administrative and liberal state are equally pernicious. There are real issues with USAID and its role as a soft power arm of meddling US imperial bureaucrats, as well as a political shield for U.S. atrocities, from Yemen to Gaza, as I’ve noted here and elsewhere. But USAID also does objectively useful work because many countries grow dependent on them, and it’s very clear that, based on recent statements made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, what is most likely going to happen is the sinister activity USAID does will simply be folded back into the State Department directly or the CIA (as it used to be) while the Incidentally Good Stuff USAID does will be be eliminated. Despite his faux libertarian posturing, Musk, of course, doesn’t care about the anti-imperialist argument. He hates USAID because he thinks it helps keep black and brown people alive, which—by virtue of the US being a largely unipolar empire—it very much does, regardless of motives.

The Times, Washington Post and CNN were not alone in having a blasé attitude about DOGE in the run up to Trump taking office. As I noted at In These Times, many Democrats indulged the patently false “cost savings” premise, and made no effort to paint it as a far right coup on the liberal state—which it clearly was. Pod Saves America’s Tommy Vietor treated DOGE as a good-faith effort that was simply misguided, and establishment journalists frequently mocked or downplayed its potential to disrupt our government.

This is part of a much larger media regime that, above all, must assume good faith from those in power, no matter their past lies, far-right ideological beliefs, or brash and illegal behavior. Let us call it the “Inverse Power-Skepticism Principle, which can be seen here:"

https://www.columnblog.com/p/us-medias-credulous-depiction-of

#USA #Propaganda #Journalism #Media #MediaManipulation #Trump #Musk #DOGE #Plutocracy