The ‘Twitter Files’ Took Over the Government

Ever since he bought Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk has been titillating his fans with wild conspiracy theories from supposedly secret files. Now that Donald Trump is back in office—and has granted the world’s wealthiest private citizen free rein to dismantle federal agencies—Musk’s conspiratorial musings are no longer just entertainment for the extremely online. Internet fantasies have become a sufficient pretext for crippling the government.

“There are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk recently posted on the platform now called X, alongside a screenshot suggesting that millions of people in the program’s database are over 120 years old. In reality, the undead were an artifact of the Social Security Administration’s archaic records system. They weren’t getting checks. But the argument that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had uncovered massive fraud captivated his fans, and the claim went viral.

Even though the Social Security administrator quickly got to explaining the facts, highlighting data from a 2023 public audit, Trump picked up the idea and falsely claimed in his speech to Congress earlier this month that Social Security abuse is rampant. As Trump and Congress consider whether to shrink a popular part of the safety net to accommodate tax cuts, fraud claims make a convenient excuse.

In recent weeks, Musk and his online allies have flooded X with similarly dubious allegations of corruption and incompetence at USAID and other agencies. (No, USAID didn’t “fund celebrity trips to Ukraine,” but Musk circulated a fabricated video making that claim.) Viral claims rile up the MAGA base, who demand accountability.

[Renée DiResta: Rumors on X are becoming the right’s new reality]

Since Trump’s reinauguration, the extremely online MAGA right has developed a passion for long-standing, easily accessible internet databases of government spending. Intrepid online sleuths boast about unearthing a budget line or a government contract whose existence had previously eluded them: The agency is hiding something. A piece of data, selectively disclosed and stripped of its broader context, is breathlessly promoted on X as proof of malfeasance: This is what they don’t want you to see. Viral outrage becomes the distribution strategy, and anyone questioning the ominous claim is in on the conspiracy: The media are covering up the truth. The outrage needs to last only long enough for Musk or Trump to boldly reveal the next step in their rapid unscheduled disassembly of government—a contract canceled, a program gutted, civil servants fired, Social Security benefits potentially interrupted. Then the cycle resets: That was just the beginning.

At this point, the process is self-perpetuating. Musk himself has become a credulous amplifier of even the wildest claims. On March 2, two days after Donald Trump excoriated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, Musk helped spread a rumor that Ukraine was somehow exploiting Social Security. Initially, an account called DataRepublican had posted screenshots from a government database showing payments to recipients in that country. Musk responded, “That’s weird.”

His attention algorithmically boosted the original post. It also prompted the influencer Mario Nawfal to amp up the outrage factor: “