A recent letter to the editor, “Doing what he said he would,” argues that President Trump is simply fulfilling his promise to cut waste. But the facts tell a different story.
During the campaign, Trump swore he knew nothing about Project 2025, the far-right blueprint for dismantling federal agencies and expanding presidential power. Yet, he began implementing it on Day One – ordering unelected billionaire Elon Musk to gut federal agencies while purging officials who might stand in his way.
The letter praises Trump for cutting wasteful spending, yet two of the three programs cited amount to approximately just 0.000057% – fifty-seven millionths of one percent – of the federal budget. The author falsely claims that a third program supports heroin cultivation in Afghanistan.
Fact-checking the letter is difficult because its claims come from a White House press release citing no credible sources. Meanwhile, nonpartisan analysts have found the administration’s “savings” claims wildly exaggerated, with Musk’s team inflating figures – sometimes by a factor of ten.
Worse, DOGE does not seem to understand what it’s cutting. Firing tens of thousands of federal employees isn’t “savings” when it destroys programs Americans care about. In some cases, DOGE has been forced to hire back people it fired – for example, health care experts protecting us from the avian flu and Ebola, and security experts safeguarding our nuclear arsenal.
The Trump administration floods the public with so much misinformation it is no wonder that many Americans are befuddled.
Harry Gural