The South African Elon Musk was confirmed as the second most powerful man in the new United States government, just below Donald Trump, in a careful and unusual staging when he appeared on Tuesday in the Oval Office of the White House alongside his young son.
PUBLICIDAD
The objective of the president and his main advisor was to defend the rapid and extensive cuts they are pushing in the federal government, although they acknowledged that there have been mistakes...and that there will be more.
PUBLICIDAD
Musk stood by the presidential desk as Trump praised his work in the questioned Department of Government Efficiency, saying they have found “shocking” evidence of unnecessary spending. The Republican president signed an executive order to expand Musk’s influence and continue reducing the federal workforce.
The executive order signed by Trump states that “a DOGE representative must approve almost all new hires,” a dramatic consolidation of personnel management across the federal government.
“The agency will not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE team leader assesses should not be filled, unless the agency head determines that the positions should be filled”, says the decree.
Musk accepts questions for the first time
Despite concerns about all the power he is amassing and the lack of transparency in his decisions, Musk described himself as an open book while answering reporters' questions for the first time since he joined the Trump administration as a special government employee three weeks ago.
The South African entrepreneur even joked that the scrutiny over his extensive influence on federal agencies was like undergoing a “daily proctology exam”. He also claimed that the work of DOGE was being shared on his website and on X, the social media platform he owns.
However, that statement is not true: the DOGE website has no information, and posts on X often lack many details, including which programs are being cut and where the organization has access.
In one of its most recent controversial decisions, the inspector general of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was fired the day after warning that it had become nearly impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in humanitarian funds after the DOGE began dismantling the agency.
Musk defended the work of DOGE as “common sense” and “not draconian nor radical”. “The people voted for large-scale government reform and that is what the people are going to get,” he said. “That’s what democracy is all about.”
Musk acknowledged, in response to a question about false claims that the United States was spending 50 million dollars on condoms for Gaza, that some of the statements he has made about government programs have been incorrect.
“Some of the things I say will be incorrect and must be corrected. So no one can bat 1,000,” he said, referring to a perfect baseball statistic. The entrepreneur promised that he would act quickly to correct errors and acknowledged that DOGE could also be making mistakes.
“We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we will also correct mistakes very quickly”, said Musk.
Curiously, Musk described the federal workforce as a fourth power “no elected” that has “more power than any elected representative.”