Elon Musk joins Trump at White House to tackle deficit crisis
IBillionaire Elon Musk stated during a visit to the White House that if the US do not address the two trillion dollar budget deficit, the country will face bankruptcy. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday, ordering a drastic reduction in the number of jobs in the federal administration.
- We've got a $2 trillion deficit, and if we don't do something about this deficit, the country is going bankrupt. The country is going bankrupt. If we don’t take action, the dollar’s going to be worth nothing, said Musk, standing in the Oval Office alongside his son X and the president.
Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday mandating all federal agencies to cooperate with Musk's DOGE team to reduce costs. Although the document's text has not yet been released, according to the Semafor portal, the decree dictates that state institutions, along with DOGE, present plans for "large-scale" employee reductions and limit hiring only to essential positions.
In his first speech at the White House, Musk—whose companies have multibillion-dollar contracts with government agencies, primarily the Pentagon—dismissed journalists' questions about the controversial actions of his DOGE team, including potential conflicts of interest. He stated that because DOGE shares its actions on its website, it means full transparency.
All of our actions are fully public ... You can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not, said the billionaire.
He also admitted that "some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected," responding to a question about his falsely promoted example of spending $50 million "on condoms for Hamas in Gaza" by the agency USAID (in reality, the amount was lower, concerned the Gaza Province in Mozambique, and was dedicated to fighting AIDS).
"Bureaucrats enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers"
He claimed that his actions are intended to "defend democracy" because so far, America has been a bureaucracy, not a democracy. Both Musk and Trump emphasized that the "audits" carried out by Musk of the expenditures of individual agencies will bring significant savings, even up to a trillion dollars. Musk also added that bureaucrats enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers.
Musk and Trump also criticized judges who temporarily halted a series of DOGE initiatives. Trump stated that "maybe we have to look at the judges," and Musk suggested that their actions are dictated by "certain views." The president, however, announced he would comply with the judges' decisions, although he said they give "more time for "fraudsters" to hide the evidence.
