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President Donald Trump says he trusts Elon Musk and his DOGE initiative that has challenged career employees across the federal government and seemingly forced its way into sensitive systems at the Treasury and other agencies.
The president sat down this week for an extended interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, set to air ahead of the Super Bowl. In an excerpt released by the network ahead of broadcast, Trump is asked about his faith in Musk — whose DOGE team lacks any kind of congressional authorization or approval — and asserted that his newest billionaire best friend was not in a position to gain anything of value from his Cabinet-adjacent position.
“Bottom line, you say you trust him?” asked Baier.
“He’s not gaining anything from this,” Trump answered. “In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He’s so into it.”
The president also maintained his position that much of the bloated federal budget related to “kickbacks” and the kind of waste and fraud that hardline conservatives have long maintained is rampant within federal programs meant to assist Americans — everything from student loans to foreign aid.
“I ran on this,” said the president. “And the people want me to find it.”
The DOGE team’s effect on the federal government so far has thrown Democrats into a panic. Members of the party’s congressional delegation attempted without success to enter the Department of Education’s building in Washington several times over the past week, each time being turned away by guards who refused entry into the locked headquarters (which usually allows visitors into the lobby to speak to officials stationed at the front desk).
In his interview airing Sunday, Trump said that DOGE would find those “kickbacks” and other waste at the Department of Education, while vowing that they would be sent to slash spending at the Pentagon as well.
“He’s going to find the same thing [at Education]. Then I’m going to go to the military, let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”
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Operating under a self-imposed shroud of secrecy, Musk’s team has been engaged in sudden and drastic changes across the federal government. DOGE staffers moved to implement Trump’s vision of completely shuttering the United States Agency for International Development, the main government agency overseeing the U.S.’s foreign aid programs, while seeming poised to attempt similar teardowns at other government agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But the efforts lack any basis in legislation approved by Congress and as such are being carried out under uncertain legal authority. Lawsuits have been filed by Democratic attorneys general around the country aimed at halting or reversing the shuttering of whole agencies and, in general, curbing the access and influence DOGE staffers have at federal agencies.
One of those lawsuits bore some success on Saturday as a federal judge ordered DOGE staffers to cease accessing sensitive systems at the Treasury responsible for disbursing payments across the federal government.
Those staffers were also ordered to delete any data acquired from their usage of the Treasury’s systems.
The reaction on the right was swift and unsurprising. Musk tore into the judge as “corrupt” in a series of tweets while Vice President J.D. Vance seemingly suggested in his own post on Sunday that the Trump administration is considering ignoring court orders issued by federal judges when Trump and his team disagree with the rulings.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” wrote the vice president.
At the same time, Democrats in Congress report frustration from their constituents who see the party as listless and lacking direction after vice president Kamala Harris’s brutal swing-state sweep at the hands of Trump in November. Even with resistance coalescing in the Legislative Branch this past week, little has been organized directly by Democratic leadership.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attended a fundraiser in Silicon Valley this past week where some of that frustration bubbled to the surface. Politico reported that the donors present, largely tech CEOs and others in the industry, were unimpressed with Jeffries as he railed against Trump but offered little vision for the Democratic Party’s policy platform going forward.
