A couple weeks into Elon Musk's rampage through the federal bureaucracy, we finally have an answer to whether congressional Republicans mind that he's usurped their main source of authority, the power of the purse: No, they do not care. If anything, accepting Musk's self-appointed role frees up their time from troublesome decision-making tasks, allowing them more time to go on TV and make excuses for letting a private citizen conduct what looks very much like a coup. Still, while lying to cable news hosts is a pleasurable way for congressional Republicans to spend their time, it hardly amounts to a full-time job. Senate Republicans, at least, still have Donald Trump's Cabinet appointees to rubber-stamp. But how else will Republican representatives in the lower chamber spend their days, now that they've handed their main job duties over to an unelected megalomaniac?
Readers will be unsurprised to learn that the answer is thuddingly stupid. On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., announced that he's forming a "Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets." That sounds very official and important, but, as with anything Comer does, it's a clown show. Reading beyond headlines, one quickly realizes the only purpose of this "task force" is to give an unjustified air of legitimacy to various conspiracy theories that have warped American minds at an increasing rate over the past few decades. The task force will allegedly reveal information on "the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK," Comer declared. They'll also pretend to unearth information about UFOs, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, whether 9/11 was an inside job, and, of course, Jeffrey Epstein's client list — no doubt sans anyone currently in GOP leadership or is, like Epstein when he was alive, a friend of Donald Trump's.
The fake conspiracies are much simpler to understand and sexier than the ongoing plot of Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency" to illegally burrow into the federal government.
There's no word yet on if the task force will investigate the nation's most pressing mystery: whether birds are real. But the silliness of the initiative was immediately reinforced by the announcement that the task force would be led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., whose "questions" about her life story only flew under the radar because her competitor in biography-fluffing was former congressman George Santos, who pled guilty to fraud. While taking questions during the announcement, Luna explained that she plans to interview "attending physicians" from President John F. Kennedy's deathbed, as well as members of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination in the '60s and '70s. The problem is that they're all dead, which any fool could have guessed since Kennedy was killed 61 years ago.
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None of this, it should be obvious, is about getting to the bottom of any real mysteries. We can know this because both of these Republicans have previously acted in bad faith, but also because the answers to their "questions" are already out there. Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK and was almost certainly acting alone, which Luna would learn if she bothered to read the Warren report. Robert F. Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, who is still around if you want to talk to him. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray, who no doubt would be a big Trump fan if he were still alive. The 9/11 Commission spells out the terrorist conspiracy that led to those attacks. Alien sightings are mostly very drunk or very tired people experiencing hallucinations. COVID-19, like most pandemics, was due to the biological process of mutation. Birds are real and can be spotted usually within minutes of leaving the house.
There are two reasons to keep "asking questions" that have been answered a million times: to distract from the very real conspiracy to wreck the federal government and to increase the stupefaction of the American people that led to Trump's November victory. On the first front, it's not especially complicated. Headlines about the JFK assassination or UFOs get people talking, especially if they never bother to read 15 paragraphs into a story that invariably shows there's no new information, no cover-up or conspiracy, and the truth remains banal. The fake conspiracies are much simpler to understand and sexier than the ongoing plot of Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) to illegally burrow into the federal government. The latter involves computer nerds clicking away at keyboards, which isn't as cinematic and emotionally arresting as the Zapruder film or titillating stories about alien abductions.
The latter is a continuation of the main MAGA propaganda strategy of the past decade: pumping an endless stream of lies and conspiracy theories into the discourse, disorienting ordinary people to the point where they can't tell fact from fiction. A lot of it doesn't even need to be overtly political. TikTok, for instance, is awash in medical disinformation, people claiming to be haunted by demons, and charlatans offering psychic readings through the computer. This contributes to a larger atmosphere where people detach from any allegiance to the reality-based world, making them more open to listening to Trump's lies and ignoring the less exciting truths offered by responsible journalists. It's a short leap from believing your astrological sign means vaccines are dangerous to yelling about how Trump's right that immigrants are kidnapping and eating pets.
Trump gets this, which is why he pounces on every conspiracy theory and puts a MAGA spin on it, no matter how apolitical it may initially seem. In December, when there was a brief mass panic over reported drone sightings in New Jersey — which turned out to be ordinary aircraft, hobbyist drones, or even stars — Trump expressed outrage and panic over the situation. He's president now, so could order an investigation if he was actually worried. But of course, he doesn't believe any of this. He just saw an opportunity to make Americans even stupider, which benefits him, so he pounced.
As reported by CNN and the Bulwark this week, congressional Republicans — even in bright-red districts — seem surprised by how much their own constituents are freaking out over Musk's assault on the federal government. I'm far more skeptical than these reporters that Republicans have any interest in reining Musk in, as they have resisted every opportunity to say no to DOGE so far. Instead, their goal is to get the heat off themselves, largely by sending out constituent letters full of lies like, "They do not have access to Americans’ sensitive details or information," which both court orders and reporting have shown not to be the case.
For congressional Republicans who want to pretend to be doing something while also distracting their voters from this ongoing assault on our national sovereignty, a fake task force pretending to "investigate" already-answered questions is just the ticket. Offering the imprimatur of congressional authority to long-standing conspiracy theories will pump this nonsense to the top of the headlines, crowding out alarming stories about the real damage DOGE is doing. It will also raise the level of fake information out there, creating even more noise that helps Musk sell his firehose of lies as just more of the same right-wing rhetoric.
Musk even winked at this during his bizarre press conference with Trump on Tuesday. "Some of the things I say will be incorrect," he gloated when confronted with his and Trump's lie that USAID was giving free condoms to Hamas. The implication was not subtle: This is an era when truth has no more value than a lie, and Republicans should feel free to make up whatever story serves their purposes.
Elon Musk on spreading misinformation about condoms for Hamas: "Some of the things that I say will be incorrect."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 11, 2025 at 4:43 PM
It's probably fruitless to beg journalists not to be snookered by this conspiracy theory "task force." They'll put out breathless press releases claiming "new" and "shocking" information. Once someone bothers to read the documents, it will invariably be baseless speculation at best, and often outright disinformation. It's all designed to bait news outlets into favoring the sexy conspiracy theories, so they give less airtime to Musk's activities, proposed cuts to health care, or Trump's corruption for clickbait about UFOs. But even if journalists can maintain discipline in the face of this goofiness, the task force will likely succeed at its bigger goal: pumping out misleading clips for social media that feed conspiracy theories. They need Americans to stay addicted to disinformation — because if the public knew what was really going on, they'd be up in arms.
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