‘Some things I say will be incorrect’: Musk defends DOGE sloppiness

Washington: Billionaire tech boss Elon Musk has admitted to making errors of fact as the head of Donald Trump’s razor gang but denied having a conflict of interest over the billions of dollars worth of government contracts secured by his companies.

Appearing with the president in the Oval Office, and with his occasionally interrupting young son X Æ A-Xii, Musk defended the work of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency against critics who say he has aggressively wielded extraordinary power with little oversight.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk defended his work as President Donald Trump’s chief savings finder.Credit: Bloomberg

Trump lashed out at courts that have temporarily blocked his agenda, including a New York district judge who has paused the DOGE’s march through Treasury’s sensitive federal payments system.

“An activist judge wants to try and stop us from doing this,” Trump said. “Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this. I said government was corrupt, and it is … I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do.”

The remarks speak to growing concerns among legal scholars, civic institutions and Democrats about the Trump administration pushing the limits of its power under the Constitution and the law.

Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, said on Wednesday that Trump has “waged a scorched earth campaign against the rule of law”. While acknowledging the president campaigned on cutting back the government, “he is not allowed to break the law to achieve those goals”, Schumer said.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday.Credit: AP

“The issue here isn’t the courts trying to control the president. It’s the president trying to control the law. He wants to decide for himself what the laws are, which ones should be applied, which ones shouldn’t, and what they mean.”

Trump promised to abide by the verdict of any court, but lamented that appeals “take a long time” and would slow his momentum.

Musk, whose team of young staff ran the ruler over foreign aid agency USAID before Trump decided to gut it, conceded he had made errors, such as when he called attention to $US50 million ($79 million) spent on “condoms in Gaza”. That money actually went to HIV prevention in Mozambique’s Gaza province.

“Some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected,” Musk said. “[But] I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million of condoms to anywhere.”

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, with his son X Æ A-Xii in the Oval Office.Credit: Bloomberg

A claim by Musk and Trump that $US59 million was spent on a luxury New York hotel for illegal migrants was also “misleading”, The New York Times found, as the money also covered food, security and other shelters.

The money was legally allocated to the Federal Emergency Management Agency last year, but the Trump administration fired the agency’s chief financial officer and three other senior staff members anyway.

Previous claims were also misleading, including an assertion that news outlets such as Politico received federal government funding in exchange for supportive stories about the Democrats, when in fact the money was a business transaction for subscriptions.

The billionaire SpaceX founder and Tesla boss brushed aside concerns about a lack of accountability, especially regarding multibillion-dollar government contracts his companies received over the past decade. He said all DOGE’s actions were publicly posted on X or the department’s website.

President Donald Trump reiterated an assertion he would prevent Elon Musk from auditing an area where there was a conflict of interest.Credit: Bloomberg

“Transparency is what builds trust. Not somebody simply asserting trust,” Musk said. “You can see: am I doing something that benefits one of my companies, or not. It’s totally obvious.”

Trump backed Musk, arguing his success in business made him an ideal candidate to audit government excess. He repeated an earlier promise that Musk would not be allowed to inspect a particular area if the White House determined there was a conflict of interest; however, there were no details about a process in place to identify such conflicts.

Musk’s outsized role in the second Trump administration has led some Democrats to call him “President Musk”, a move designed to get under the president’s skin. This week’s cover of Time magazine depicts Musk behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

Time’s February 24 issue features Elon Musk as if he was sitting at the Resolute Desk.Credit: Time Magazine

Musk rejected suggestions he was undermining democracy as an unelected private citizen. He described his mission as “restoring democracy” – but in line with the agenda advanced by Trump before the election.

“You couldn’t ask for a stronger mandate from the public,” he said. “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.”

Trump signed an executive order giving Musk’s team even greater powers to shrink the size of the government workforce. It declares that each agency can hire only one person for every four who leave, the hiring plan must be formulated with the DOGE team leader, and the team leader must approve any decision to fill a vacancy. All federal agencies must also prepare to initiate “large-scale reductions in force”, the order says.

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