‘Morning Joe’ pored over DOGE’s latest “mind-numbing” math that had data analyst Steven Rattner scratching his head over $3.7 billion in missing cash.
The panel were reacting to claims made by President Donald Trump during his Tuesday address to Congress that DOGE had identified “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud,” as Elon Musk nodded his head in the crowd and the audience erupted in applause.
Co-host Jonathan Lemire then set Rattner loose on the numbers Thursday morning, asking: “All right, Steve, has DOGE found anywhere near as much fraud as Trump claims?”
Rattner, a qualified economist, was unequivocal in his response. “Well, it was kind of mind-numbing the other night to listen to Trump list those programs one by one by one that he’s found and make fun of them and so forth,” he said.
He added that they “were only in the millions of dollars.”
Rattner continued: “And when you actually add up everything DOGE has claimed and also the DOGE reality, you get a very different picture.”
He turned to his graph, that showed that despite an initial boast of the discovery of $8.5 billion in so-called fraud on Feb. 17, the total now stands at just $2.3 billion from contracts that have been terminated and $2.5 billion in contracts that are in the process of being annulled.
Rattner pointed out that this amounts to just $4.8 billion of total “fraud,” not $8.5 billion and certainly not the “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” touted by Trump in his address Tuesday.
Concerning the discrepancy, Rattner said “a bunch of that stuff just disappeared from their website.”
“[It’s] less than what they said at the beginning. And obviously, just like the tiniest little fraction of what Trump claims they have found,” he concluded.
DOGE has played fast and loose with math in the past. Just last Sunday, the body claimed to have saved U.S. taxpayers an “estimated” $105 billion—yet, its own website tallied a much smaller number: $19 billion. This left $86 billion unaccounted for.
Last month, the department claimed to have recouped $8 billion in savings by nixing a DEI contract actually worth just $8 million.
