Elon Musk exaggerates costs of National Park Service survey

In a Fox News interview, Elon Musk claimed that the Department of the Interior was charged almost a billion dollars for a simple online survey about National Parks. He asserted that a 10-question survey that could be done using SurveyMonkey was being charged at nearly a billion dollars. This assertion was followed by Steve Davis, who works closely with Musk, suggesting that DOGE halted an $830 million contract for web-based customer satisfaction surveys for the Department. However, investigations by CBS News found no evidence supporting the existence of either the billion-dollar survey or the supposed lucrative contract. CBS News looked closely into Musk's claims and reported no indication that the Department of the Interior had spent or intended to spend such a significant amount on any single contract or survey. This investigation revealed that while the DOGE account cited a $75 million contract for designing customer satisfaction surveys, and an attempt to award an $830 million contract, these claims lacked solid backing. The alleged $830 million contract was reportedly terminated before being awarded, and there were no records of such a contract within available federal contracting data from the last 17 years. In context, Musk's misleading statements were echoed by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a Cabinet meeting where he made similar claims about the existence of such contracts, calling it fraudulent. Former President Trump also responded during the meeting, indicating support to call the information a fraud. Moreover, the DOGE's