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By Martha McHardy
US News Reporter
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Elon Musk joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday in his first appearance at the White House.
Musk was joined by his 4-year-old son as he took questions from reporters while standing next to a seated Trump, who has tasked him with slashing public spending and reducing the size of the federal government as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk's appearance came amid concerns about how much power and influence the unelected tech billionaire has in how the country is run while the exact scope of DOGE's power remains undefined.
Read More on Politics
Polls show that Musk's influence in the government is not exactly welcome. A YouGov/The Economist poll conducted among 1,604 Americans from February 2 to 4 found that 51 percent of respondents believe Musk has "a lot" of influence on the Trump administration. But only 13 percent want him to have a high amount of influence and 46 percent said they want him to have no influence.
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In recent days, DOGE has drawn scrutiny for seeking unfettered access to the internal data of government agencies, including the Labor Department, U.S. Treasury, Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Small Business Administration and more.
It has also come under fire for its attempts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) after Musk claimed Trump agreed that the agency should be shut down. Both moves have been temporarily halted by the courts and continue to face legal challenges.
Newsweek has rounded up five takeaways from the impromptu press conference.
Musk Details DOGE's M.O.
During his appearance in the Oval Office, Musk attempted to outline DOGE's purpose in the federal government amid questions about the department's role in the Trump administration.
"At a high level, you say what is the goal of DOGE, and I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy," he said. "If there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.
"So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, fix that feedback loop, and ensure that the public's elected representatives—the president, the House, and the Senate—decide what happens, as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
"We have this unelected, unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, that in a lot of ways currently has more power than any elected representative. And it's not something the people want. It does not match the will of the people, and it's something we've got to fix."
Musk was not elected to his position. Nonetheless, he has frequently been critical of the role of civil servants and has pledged to fire 25 percent of the federal workforce.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order reclassifying thousands of federal employees as political hires, making them easier to fire if deemed insufficiently loyal to the new president and his aims. The order effectively reinstates "Schedule F," a policy created under Trump's first administration that altered civil service rules to enable the firing of a wide range of career federal workers by removing their civil service protections, reclassifying their positions as political appointments.
The Trump administration last week attempted to put more than 2,000 USAID workers on paid leave and recall nearly all of those posted abroad until the move was blocked in court.
Musk Says DOGE Will Be 'Transparent'
Musk made a big deal out of transparency during the press conference, telling reporters that the goal of DOGE is "to be as transparent as possible."
"We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website," he said. "So all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization."
Not much is known about how DOGE is operating. An executive order signed by Trump directs all relevant government agencies to establish teams of DOGE representatives.
But when the identities of those staffers were revealed last week, and the Wall Street Journal reported that one 25-year-old staffer, Marko Elez, had made racist posts on an anonymous X account in recent months, Musk called for the reporter who wrote the story to be fired.
He also accused the news media of doxxing another DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine, after it was revealed that he was known online as "Big Balls."
"Can't believe they doxxed another DOGE team member," Musk wrote on X.
The DOGE team consists of about 40 staffers, though the exact number remains unclear. Many have sought to keep their identities private, with some refusing to provide their last names to career officials at the agencies they were assigned to, according to The Guardian.
Musk Makes Corruption Claims—'Mind-Blowing'
Musk claimed that he had found corruption within the federal government, including at USAID.
He made the claim when Trump urged him to dive deeper into the "things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about [$]30 million," apparently referring to former USAID head Samantha Power. Musk previously suggested Power was corrupt, claims that were quickly debunked.
"Right. Well, we often do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there are quite a few people in actually here who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position," Musk replied.
"And we're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they are very good at investing, [in] which case you should take the investment advice perhaps. But it just seems to be mysteriously that they get wealthier. We don't know why. Where does it come from? And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at taxpayer expense."
He then launched into a lengthy account of his alleged findings at the Treasury Department and Social Security Administration that he called "mind-blowing."
"If you look at say, say Treasury, for example, basic controls that should be in place, that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment," he said.
"And that if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually pay it. None of those things are true currently. So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks, just plain not moving. So you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got comment fields that are also blanks. So, you don't know why the payment was made.
"And then we've got this, a truly absurd, a do not pay list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do not pay list. And this we're talking about terrorist organizations. We're talking about known fraudsters. Known aspects of waste. Known things that do not match any congressional appropriation can take up to a year to get on the list. And even once on the list, the list is not used. It's mind-blowing."
Musk Reveals Plan To Cut Inflation
Musk also revealed that he plans to reduce federal expenses in order to cut the budget deficit in half and cut inflation.
"We've got a $2 trillion deficit, and if we don't do something about it, the country is going bankrupt. It's really astounding that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the defense budget, which is shocking. We spend a lot of money on defense. If that keeps going, we're essentially going to bankrupt the country.
"It's not optional for us to reduce federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country, and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide for its citizens and not simply be drowning in vast amounts of debt."
He also said the budget deficit would be cut by way of "deregulation."
"We can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and with deregulation, because there are a lot of regulations that don't serve the public good," he said. "We need to free America to build. And if we do that, we can get the economic growth to be maybe 3 percent or maybe 5 percent.
"That's if you can get $1 trillion of economic growth and cut the budget deficit by $1 trillion. Between now and next year, there is no inflation. There's no inflation in 2026, and if the government is not borrowing much, interest costs decline, and mortgage, car payments, credit card bills and student debt payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the average American.
"Imagine going down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same, and their mortgage and all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average American? That's what we're aiming for."
Musk has suggested he could cut "at least $2 trillion" from U.S. government spending by eradicating "waste." That would amount to cutting around 30 percent of total federal government spending.
In the most recent fiscal year (from October 2023 to September 2024) the U.S. federal government spent $6.75 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Musk Denies Any Conflict Of Interest
Asked about any personal conflicts and whether he's policing himself, Musk did not answer directly. Instead, he pointed to the DOGE website (dogegov.com, not the official doge.gov), saying it explains what it's doing—apparently referencing the group's account on X, which details federal contract cancellations. When pressed again, Musk said the public can judge for themselves.
"You can see whether I'm doing something that's benefitting one of my companies or not," Musk said. "It's totally obvious."
Musk, whose businesses hold federal contracts worth billions, insisted he wouldn't be able to act improperly.
"I'll be scrutinized nonstop," he said.
Trump said that if he believed Musk had a conflict of interest on a project, he would not allow it to move forward.
Musk is classified as an unpaid "special government employee," so, according to the White House, he is not required to file a public financial disclosure.
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