To the editor:

For those of you out there that travel much, you are probably aware that Missouri’s license plate is identified with “Show-Me State.” Tom Cruise in his movie “Jerry Maguire” famously uttered the enduring imperative sentence, “Show me the money!” I was not a very good math student, but I vividly remember my math teachers’ emphasizing the necessity to…“Show me your work.”

Now the President and his de facto co-President, Elon Musk, tell us that they’ve uncovered billions of dollars of fraud and waste in their desire to purge parts of the federal government’s spending. More precisely, they’re looking at billions of dollars that they personally deem to be unnecessary because they just don’t like certain legislatively approved programs. You can be sure that Elon and his henchmen will not find any fraud or waste that negatively affects the billions that he receives from his government contracts. There exist proper channels to excise the purported fraud and waste. The authoritarians-in-waiting should be told sternly, “Show us your evidence!”

I would hope that the guardrails in our government won’t take the word of a serial liar when he hyperbolically professes to have found billions of dollars of fraud. Show us your evidence.

It’s likely as fictitiously manufactured as the president’s lies about the “stolen” 2020 election.

Keith R. Klawitter

Morgan