Tech baron Elon Musk exposed “Big Balls” to the world for the first time last week, introducing the 19-year-old software engineer-turned-DOGE worker whose odd nickname has raised eyebrows.
“Big Balls,” whose real name is Edward Coristine, quickly gained national attention because of his age and nickname — with critics pointing to both as evidence that the Department of Government Efficiency was being led by a bunch of baby-faced neophytes.
Coristine, appearing on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Thursday alongside Musk and a coterie of other DOGE employees, said he gave himself the nickname on a lark.
“I just set it as my LinkedIn username,” Coristine said. “People on LinkedIn take themselves like super seriously, and they’re adverse [sic] to risk, and I was like, well, I want to be neither of those things, so I just said it, and honestly, I didn’t even think anyone would notice.”
Musk, 53, cracked up at Coristine’s explanation and quipped, “LinkedIn is so cringe.”
Coristine previously ran a company named DiamondCDN during high school. Its services were allegedly used by “EGodly,” a website run by a gang of cybercriminals, Reuters reported.
Coristine is widely reported to be a fervent fan of Musk and a strong believer in DOGE’s mission to root out government bloat and inefficiencies.
“Right now, I’m working on some payment computer stuff,” Coristine explained of his responsibilities at DOGE. “One of our initiatives is to root out fraud and waste, and to do that, we started looking at the payment computers, and as mentioned earlier, there’s no accounting of what payments actually go to in the payment computer.
“So, like, you look at a specific line item, like $20 million, and you’re like OK, what is this money actually going to? And for the majority of payment systems, it’s like, well, we don’t really know.”
Watters pressed him on how he handles situations where the feds don’t fully know where the money is going.
“It’s a huge cause for concern because, like, the upstream thing, which is distributing the money, literally has no checks and no accountability to the actual American taxpayer, so it’s a huge vector for fraud, waste and abuse,” Coristine said.
Asked whether government workers respect taxpayer dollars, Coristine replied, “There’s no incentive to if you work in the government.
“I think the incentives will always decide the outcomes.”
Musk’s time as a special government employee is set to wrap up at the end of the month, and he is expected to focus more on his business empire than DOGE.
The Post reported last week that the world’s richest man is no longer regularly working from the White House as he begins to shift focus away from DOGE.
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