CBS Evening News Slinks to Evidence-Free Fearmongering on DOGE

Jorge Bonilla
February 11th, 2025 1:13 AM

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So desperate are the media to discredit the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and by extension that of Elon Musk, that they are willing to resort to rank fear mongering. As Major Garrett’s report for the CBS Evening News proves, they also seem to believe that their viewers are morons.

The report opens both with a recap of the CBS poll showing President Donald Trump with a 53% approval rating, and a mewling objection (by John Dickerson of course) of the manner in which Trump is fulfilling his promises:

MAURICE DUBOIS: I'm Maurice Dubois. President Trump today began the fourth week of his second term, and in the new CBS news poll more than half of Americans, 53% approve of the job he is doing. And 70% of them, whether they agree with him or not, say he is doing exactly what he promised to do. That includes cutting spending.

JOHN DICKERSON: But how he's doing it is another matter. 

They's like you to believe that this is about process. Yeah, right.

This ssets up Garrett’s report on DOGE with a spotlight on the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service, the bureau that processes outgoing payments. Garrett kicks off his report by implying that DOGE is nefariously hacking into sensitive systems (click “expand) to view transcript):

MAJOR GARRETT: Good Evening, Maurice and John. It's called the Bureau of Fiscal Service and what they are looking for is what people in Washington have been looking for for decades: waste, fraud, and abuse. This quest is not new. The methods, however, are.

DONALD TRUMP: Come here, Elon!

GARRETT: President Trump has given the world's richest man a temporary White House job and an ambitious order: audit the federal government agency by agency. Expose waste and fraud. And if you have to infiltrate sensitive government databases, do it. 

Garrett’s subject matter expert, of course, is a former Biden Treasury apparatchik who pooh-poohs DOGE efforts:

NATASHA SARIN: The way to think about the Bureau of Fiscal Service is almost like the Accounts Payable department for the federal government.

GARRETT: Natasha Sarin worked for the Treasury Department for two years during the Biden administration. The Bureau of Fiscal Service distributes about 1.3 billion payments annually. Things like Social Security checks, Medicaid reimbursements, and federal grants.

NATASHA SARIN: I think fraud, and fraud in the government is actually like a really worthwhile cause to try to combat. The challenge is that it has literally nothing to do with what the Bureau of Fiscal Service does and what this Treasury payments ecosystem is.

GARRETT: So if you're on the hunt for that, you don't go here.

SARIN: You certainly don’t- that doesn't sit in the Bureau of Fiscal Service. That sits at the agencies.

Sarin has since landed at Yale, where she is President and Co-Founder of the Budget Lab. Her bio describes her work at Treasury as follows:

...(Sarin) served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and later as a Counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the United States Treasury Department, where her work focused on narrowing the gap between the taxes owed by the American public and those collected by the Internal Revenue Service. 

To be crystal clear, this sure reads like Sarin was in charge of audits. 

The interview consisted largely of deflecting as to Treasury’s role, and fearmongering over a hypothetical Elon Musk access to sensitive personal information. What’s he going to do, use it to take out a credit card?! 

GARRETT: The Treasury Department has told Congress Musk's associates cannot change any payments. That they have had so-called “read-only access” to the database. But those assurances have not been independently verified. There's also a question about data security.

I file my taxes electronically. Does that put me inside the database of the Bureau of Fiscal Services?

SARIN: It sure does. And your bank account information- that's how you get your refund electronically.

GARRETT: Not just who I am, where I live…

SARIN: How much you made, how much your refund is.

GARRETT: All of that is in there.

SARIN: Absolutely. The most private, sensitive data about American citizens all sits in the Bureau of Fiscal Service in the Treasury payments ecosystem.

We’re not two months removed from reporting about China hacking sensitive information at Treasury, but we’re supposed to believe Elon is a threat. That’s projection.

GARRETT: Musk’s top Treasury deputy, a tech executive, had access until the weekend court ruling, accessing vast government databases by those not versed in federal data security could open systems to hacking.

SARIN: This is the most sensitive information about them that the federal government has historically held in the hands of very few career civil servants who are trained and experienced in how to deal with this data and these ecosystems. There are real security questions at play here.

The package portion of the report ends with Sarin suggesting that perhaps Trump voters don’t know what they voted for:

GARRETT: There might be some who watch this conversation and say, “Look, I trust President Trump and he trusts Elon Musk. And I didn't know anything about this agency and I don't know anything about these civil servants. But I trust Trump and I trust Elon Musk. I'm okay with it.”

SARIN: Yeah?

GARRETT: What would you say to them?

SARIN: I don't want to be hyperbolic and I understand and really respect the fact that democracies churn, and that the people voted and made Donald Trump the President of the United States for a second time. That said, I think we should all be wary and be concerned about the fact that some of the actions that might be taken are actions that make us less safe and less secure.

The desperation is such that they resort to open fear mongering about Musk’s intentions, and no evidence shown of any potential criminality or wrongdoing. There was only process innuendo pushed mostly by someone whose job it was to sic auditors on to taxpayers- an innuendo that depends on voters being morons.

Ultimately, the report falls flat, and stands as a slap in the face of the American people who voted for massive change to happen. Regardless of how the media may feel about the change.

Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, February 10th, 2025:

JOHN DICKERSON: Good evening, I'm John Dickerson.

MAURICE DUBOIS: I'm Maurice Dubois. President Trump today began the fourth week of his second term, and in the new CBS news poll more than half of Americans, 53% approve of the job he is doing. And 70% of them, whether they agree with him or not, say he is doing exactly what he promised to do. That includes cutting spending.

DICKERSON: But how he's doing it is another matter. The president made Elon Musk a kind of Sheriff of DOGE, The Department of Government Efficiency, to downsize just about everything. Our poll found Americans evenly split over how much influence, if any, Elon Musk and DOGE should have over government operations and spending. And a federal judge has blocked their access to a Treasury bureau that, among other things, sends out government payments- including Social Security.

DUBOIS: So what is this little known bureau, and what is the Musk team looking for? Questions Major Garrett is about to answer. Major.

MAJOR GARRETT: Good Evening, Maurice and John. It's called the Bureau of Fiscal Service and what they are looking for is what people in Washington have been looking for for decades: waste, fraud, and abuse. This quest is not new. The methods, however, are.

DONALD TRUMP: Come here, Elon!

GARRETT: President Trump has given the world's richest man a temporary White House job and an ambitious order: audit the federal government agency by agency. Expose waste and fraud. And if you have to infiltrate sensitive government databases, do it. 

NATASHA SARIN: The way to think about the Bureau of Fiscal Service is almost like the Accounts Payable department for the federal government.

GARRETT: Natasha Sarin worked for the Treasury Department for two years during the Biden administration. The Bureau of Fiscal Service distributes about 1.3 billion payments annually. Things like Social Security checks, Medicaid reimbursements, and federal grants.

NATASHA SARIN: I think fraud, and fraud in the government is actually like a really worthwhile cause to try to combat. The challenge is that it has literally nothing to do with what the Bureau of Fiscal Service does and what this Treasury payments ecosystem is.

GARRETT: So if you're on the hunt for that, you don't go here.

SARIN: You certainly don’t- that doesn't sit in the Bureau of Fiscal Service. That sits at the agencies.

GARRETT: The Treasury Department has told Congress Musk's associates cannot change any payments. That they have had so-called “read-only access” to the database. But those assurances have not been independently verified. There's also a question about data security.

I file my taxes electronically. Does that put me inside the database of the Bureau of Fiscal Services?

SARIN: It sure does. And your bank account information- that's how you get your refund electronically.

GARRETT: Not just who I am, where I live…

SARIN: How much you made, how much your refund is.

GARRETT: All of that is in there.

SARIN: Absolutely. The most private, sensitive data about American citizens all sits in the Bureau of Fiscal Service in the Treasury payments ecosystem.

GARRETT: Musk’s top Treasury deputy, a tech executive, had access until the weekend court ruling, accessing vast government databases by those not versed in federal data security could open systems to hacking.

SARIN: This is the most sensitive information about them that the federal government has historically held in the hands of very few career civil servants who are trained and experienced in how to deal with this data and these ecosystems. There are real security questions at play here.

GARRETT: There might be some who watch this conversation and say, “Look, I trust President Trump and he trusts Elon Musk. And I didn't know anything about this agency and I don't know anything about these civil servants. But I trust Trump and I trust Elon Musk. I'm okay with it.”

SARIN: Yeah?

GARRETT: What would you say to them?

SARIN: I don't want to be hyperbolic and I understand and really respect the fact that democracies churn, and that the people voted and made Donald Trump the President of the United States for a second time. That said, I think we should all be wary and be concerned about the fact that some of the actions that might be taken are actions that make us less safe and less secure.

GARRETT: Security is one issue, transparency another. So far, The White House has not revealed who was doing this work, what they have found, what they plan to do with it.

DICKERSON: And Major, this work outside of the Bureau of Fiscal Service, where- what other kinds of departments might be getting this same treatment?

GARRETT: So you heard a reference that the real matter resides within each agency. So far, 16 agencies have been touched in one manner or another by those investigators under the DOGE umbrella. You can see some of the names there. FEMA, Department of Energy, Department of Labor, CDC, EPA. You don't see there yet the Department of Education or the Department of Defense. President Trump has said they are next.

DUBOIS: Major, a big key here is The White House is claiming fraud and waste and abuse, have they actually proven that?

GARRETT: President Trump has said corruption, kickbacks, interestingly in one case-  U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal judge said, “Please. Bring me the evidence of this so I can understand why you believe it's imperative to shut USAID down rapidly. The Department of Justice, Maurice, did not provide any evidence of kickbacks or corruption.

DICKERSON: Major, a question I get a lot from those people who- most of them didn't vote for Donald Trump. It is: can he do this? Can Elon Musk do this?

GARRETT: The legal challenges are on two fronts. One, a 1974 Privacy Act law that says you cannot provide information about government payments to outsiders. This may be in violation of that. There's also a 2002 cybersecurity law that says any outsider brought into the federal databases has to pass their own cybersecurity protocols. We have no information whether anyone from DOGE has passed those protocols. 

DICKERSON: Major Garrett for us in Washington. Thank you, Major.

 

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