MAGA influencers have a huge platform on X, with some having millions of followers.
One such person is David Freeman, aka Gunther Eagleman, who has 1.7 million followers and garners . an average around 22,000 views per post, though his viral tweets frequently surpass hundreds of thousands or even millions of impressions in a single day, according to platform data.
So yeah, he has a lot of influence. But what does he do with this influence? Does he tweet out factual, valuable info?
Not so much.
In the above tweet, he states authoritatively that most of the $39 trillion in US debt is almost all due to fraud.
Is he correct?
The U.S. national debt is primarily caused by the federal government continually spending more money than it collects in revenue, creating structural budget deficits that require the government to borrow money by issuing securities like Treasury bonds.
The United States national debt has grown by over $33 trillion since 2001, increasing from roughly $5.8 trillion to exceed $39 trillion today.
Debt in 2001: ~$5.8 trillion
Current National Debt: ~$39.22 trillion
Total Accumulated Debt: ~$33.4 trillion
So from George W Bush to the second term of Donald Trump to date. That quarter of century accounts for 85% of the country's debt in a 250 year old history.
Was that predominately due to fraud, as Gunther Eagleman states?
Since 2001, the post-9/11 wars have directly contributed an estimated $2.3 trillion in base military spending, with the all-in costs—including future veterans' medical care and accrued interest—reaching between $5 trillion and $8 trillion. Because these operations were funded almost entirely through borrowing, this spending represents a massive portion of the debt accumulated this century.
In addition, major legislative packages, including the 2008 economic stimulus, and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and let's not forget about COVID-19 Relief: Pandemic-era relief programs cost over $5 trillion, leading to the fastest single-period debt acceleration in modern history outside of wartime.
Government watchdogs estimate that between $200 billion and over $500 billion of federal COVID-19 relief funds were lost to fraud, while I suspect it is higher.
Let's not forget an aging population and growing healthcare costs mean more people are claiming benefits from Social Security and Medicare, increasing the required federal payouts.
So, what about Gunther's proposition that its mostly due to fraud? Not so much.Government Accountability Office (GAO) and congressional estimates suggest the federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud. This translates to roughly 3% to 7% of total federal expenditures.
So, clearly Eagleman is making plenty of Twitter money posting bogus nonsense.What about the last part of his tweet: Make DOGE great again!, he writes.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) achieved significant bureaucratic restructuring, but its actual financial savings remain highly disputed. While DOGE claimed up to $160 billion to $215 billion in savings, independent budget analysts and economic reviews suggest the verifiable savings are closer to $1.4 billion to $7.3 billion.
While MAGA, much like the leftists and the neocons, typically care less about the national debt, so it was interesting Gunther even tweeted about it. But I suspect his motivations were not exposing any of the above for his followers.
Just to let him know, his idol, Donald Trump, accumulated $7.8 trillion during his first 4 years and since his second term began on January 20,2026, $3 trillion more has been accumulated.
It seems no matter who goes in the White House, we always get more of the same--more debt, more spending and more wars.
