Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Read more
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez branded Elon Musk a “leech on the public” in her latest jab at the tech billionaire-turned-senior adviser to the president.
Musk has been behind the Department of Government Efficiency sweeping staff cuts, reduced real estate footprint and slashed contracts as the Trump administration aims to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.” But the New York Democrat, along with some of her colleagues in Congress, have expressed concern about Musk’s unwieldy overhaul of the federal government.
“This guy is a leech on the public. No matter how many billions he gets in tax cuts and government contracts, it will never be enough for him,” the representative wrote on X Saturday.
“Now he’s going after the elderly, the disabled, and orphaned children so he can pocket it in tax cuts for himself,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “It’s disgusting.”

open image in gallery
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks were in response to Musk’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast where he called Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Roughly 69 million Americans — retired workers and people with disabilities — receive Social Security benefits each month.
Musk also repeated a false claim made by President Donald Trump, stating that “millions and millions of people over 100 years old” are receiving Social Security benefits. The tech billionaire told Rogan: “We found just with a basic search of the Social Security database that there were 20 million dead people marked as alive.”
In reality, a 2024 report showed that from 2015 through 2022, only 1 percent of the payments made by the Social Security Administration were improper — and most of those improper payments went to living people, the Associated Press first reported.
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments Saturday are part of a long-standing feud with the Tesla CEO. Days earlier, she called Musk a “billionaire conman.”

open image in gallery
After the DOGE-led effort to lay off dozens of employees from the FDA’s medical devices division — some of whom were later reinstated, the New York Congresswoman told her colleagues last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee: “Elon Musk is not a scientist. He is not an engineer. He is a billionaire conman with a lot of money.”
She then pleaded: “I sincerely ask you all to examine what expertise he has in medical devices…These are people’s lives that are on the line.”
Last month, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out Musk’s companies’ contracts with the U.S. government. “If you want to start with waste, start with Elon’s defense contracts at the Pentagon,” she wrote. “In fact, we should start with transparency around defense contracts in general, which take up an enormous sum of public funds. But they won’t do that, will they?”
In response, the SpaceX founder said: “Do you actually write these or am I replying to your intern?”