well if he wants the credit, he deserves all the credit.

You’re missing a few factors:

1. The US would’ve been paying Russia about 10x the cost if SpaceX didn’t exist.

2. Boeing was awarded a ~$3B contract within the Artemis mission and, so far, the outcome is that they can’t safely bring back the astronauts they sent to space.

Those two factors alone indicate that it’s more a mutually beneficial relationship between SpaceX and the government with, arguably, SpaceX providing more benefit relative to the government.

You're pretty good at writing clickbait headlines yourself. Those huge checks are a DoD contract for unblockable internet coms not some handout and for $20 million a month it sounds like Elon is giving them a deal, at least compared to what Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman get every year. They don't just suck the teat, they eat half of it.