CNN
–
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who now leads a broad initiative to remodel the federal government, offered the most sustained defense of its high reach measures during a question and answer session in the Oval Office late in Tuesday.
Before the watchful eye of President Donald Trump from his seat on the desktop Resoluto, Musk, who remained standing a few meters away, dressed in a long black coat and accompanied by his son X, four years old, denied that his wide treatment Commercial with the Government equivalent to conflicts of interest in their function of directing the Government Efficiency Department (Doge).
And he eluded the questions about the authorities he is using to gut entire organisms, saying instead that Trump’s election last November was equivalent to sufficient license to carry out the will of voters.
“The people voted in favor of a great government reform, and that is what the people are going to get. That is why democracy, ”he said.
Speaking long and lying, Musk made a scathing evaluation of the federal bureaucracy, which described as full of “frauds” that accept bribes, some of which, according to him, have become millionaires through fraud.
“I think the reality is that they are enriched at the cost of the taxpayer,” Musk said, speaking without presenting the USAID employees, one of the government agencies he has proposed to close.
He and the president speak almost every day about what measures to take and in which part of the vast federal government focus their attention, according to Musk. His actions have caused a five alarms fire among the Democrats of Congress, and the republican response has been much more moderate.
Aware of this scrutiny and attention to Musk, from the Congress, to the courts, to the citizen administration. Tuesday’s appearance was also an effort to eliminate mystique a bit, the advisors said, as well as for the White House to demonstrate that Musk works under the direction of the president, not as an unscrupulous operator within the government. The rapport between Musk and Trump was total.
Even so, the appearance was largely from Musk, and Trump sat down listening. In several moments, Trump intervened to ask Musk to expand more about some of the waste that he claimed to find within the government.
“It’s a successful guy, that’s why we want him to do this,” Trump said. “We don’t want an unsuccessful guy doing this.”
Musk, who has recognized that he voted for Joe Biden four years ago, became one of Trump’s greatest benefactors last year. He spent more than US $ 250 million in the last months of the race around 2024 to boost Trump’s candidacy.
Both men proclaimed their aggressive efforts to reduce and rebuild the federal government, stating that US voters sent Trump to the White House to reform Washington’s functioning. Trump has fired the Government’s guardians, or general inspectors, in agencies throughout the city, which has raised countless issues of supervision.
In the middle of the session in the Oval Office, Musk’s son got on his father’s shoulders and started playing with his hair, which made Musk take off his black cap with the slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Musk offered few evidence of his various statements, including the general accusations of fraud and waste. And he admitted frankly that sometimes he makes statements that turn out to be false.
“Some of the things I say will be incorrect and must be corrected. So no one is going to hit a thousand, ”said Musk. “That is, you know, we will make mistakes, but we will act quickly to correct them.”
Musk wanted to underline his conviction that “transparency is what generates trust,” and insisted that all efforts from his team were made public on social networks and Doge’s website.
But it also seemed to irritate itself because of the scrutiny he was receiving, comparing it with a “daily proctological exam.”
That same day, a White House official said that Musk would not have to present a public financial declaration, which would allow the richest man in the world to avoid the public scrutiny of his possible conflicts. The various Musk companies have billions of dollars in contracts with the government.
“As a special employee of the Government who is not an official of a commission, he will present a confidential report of financial dissemination according to the standard,” a White House official told CNN.
And on Tuesday, a surveillance group filed a lawsuit to obtain Doge records, claiming that it was structured to keep their communications secret.
Trump, sitting behind the desk, suggested in the oval office that would correspond to him intervene if his administration considered that there was a lack of transparency or conflict of interest.
“We wouldn’t allow it,” Trump said.
While the snow fell out of the oval office, an extraordinary scene occurred. Trump watched in silence for several minutes how Musk directed the room, less than a week after a cover of Time magazine showed Musk standing behind the desktop desktop, as if suggested that he, and not Trump, was in command.
Musk, an entrepreneur born in South Africa, cannot be president. But he has assumed one of the highest non -elected government positions, even if he has billions of dollars in government contracts.
“All our actions are totally public,” Musk told a journalist who asked about conflicts of interest. “So if you see something like: ‘Elon, there can be a conflict’, it is not that people will be shy about it. They will say it immediately. ”
