Elon Musk schooled a reporter in the Oval Office on Tuesday night who pressed him on the issues of being transparent and accountable to the American people.
The reporter noted that the White House said that Musk would identify any potential conflicts of interest that he may have while leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself?” the reporter asked. “What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?”
Musk responded: “Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been, I don’t know of a case that where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”
“And the kind of things we’re doing are, I think, are very, very simple and basic,” he continued. “These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it’s got nothing to do with like, say a contract for some company of mine at all.”
When asked about the billions of dollars his companies have received for federal contracts, Musk said that all of DOGE’s actions “are fully public.”
“So if you see anything, you say, like, ‘Wait a second, hey Elon, that doesn’t, that seems like maybe there’s a conflict there.’ It’s not like people are going to be shy about saying that,” he said. “They’ll say it immediately.”
“Transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust,” he said. “So not somebody saying they’re trustworthy, but transparency, so you can see everything that’s going on, and you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It’s totally obvious.”
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