WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s most powerful adviser, Elon Musk, made a rare public appearance at the White House on Tuesday to defend the swift and extensive cuts he’s pushing across the federal government while acknowledging there have been mistakes and will be more.
Musk stood next to the Resolute Desk with his young son as Trump praised Musk’s work with his Department of Government Efficiency, saying they’ve found “shocking” evidence of wasteful spending. The Republican president signed an executive order to expand Musk’s influence and continue downsizing the federal workforce.
Despite concerns that he’s amassing unaccountable power with little transparency, Musk described himself as an open book as he took questions from reporters for the first time since joining the Trump administration as a special government employee. He joked that the scrutiny over his sprawling influence over federal agencies was like a “daily proctology exam.”
He also claimed that DOGE’s work was being shared on its website and on X, the social media platform owned by Musk. However, the DOGE website has no information, and the postings on X often lack many details, including which programs are being cut and where the organization has access.
The White House has also been moving to limit independent oversight. The inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired a day after warning that it had become nearly impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in humanitarian funds after DOGE began dismantling the agency.
Musk defended DOGE’s work as “common sense” and “not draconian or radical.”
“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get,” he said. “That’s what democracy is all about.”
Musk acknowledged, in response to a question about false statements that the U.S. was spending $50 million on condoms for Gaza, that some of the claims he’s made about government programs have been wrong.
“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody can bat 1,000,” he said. He promised that he would act quickly to correct errors, and acknowledged that DOGE could be making errors as well.
“We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we’ll also fix the mistakes very quickly,” Musk said.
He said there are some good people in the federal bureaucracy, but they need to be accountable. Musk described the workforce as an “unelected” fourth branch that had “more power than any elected representative.”
The executive order signed by Trump said a DOGE representative will need to approve almost all new hiring, a dramatic consolidation of personnel management across the federal government.
“The agency shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled,” the order said.
In addition, the Office of Management and Budget will require that agencies “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” There would be exceptions when it comes to immigration, law enforcement and public safety.
Agency leaders were also directed to plan for “large-scale reductions in force.” Government functions not required by statute would be prioritized for elimination.
Trump and Musk are already pushing federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, although their plan is currently on hold while a judge reviews its legality. The deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, would allow employees to quit and still get paid until Sept. 30. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers have taken the offer.
Hundreds of people gathered for a rally Tuesday across the street from the U.S. Capitol in support of federal workers.
Janet Connelly, a graphic designer with the Department of Energy, said she’s fed up with emails from the Office of Personnel Management encouraging people to take the deferred resignation program.
She tried to use her spam settings to filter out the emails but to no avail. Connelly said she has no plans to take the offer.
“From the get-go, I didn’t trust it,” she said.
Connelly said she thinks of her work as trying to do an important service for the American public.
“It’s too easy to vilify us,” she said.
Others have said fear and uncertainty have swept through the federal workforce.
“They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried about their families. They’re also worried about their work and the communities they serve,” said Helen Bottcher, a former Environmental Protection Agency employee and current union leader in Seattle.
Bottcher participated in a press conference hosted by Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington.
Murray said workers “deserve better than to be threatened, intimidated and pushed out the door by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.” She also said that “we actually need these people to stay in their jobs or things are going to start breaking.”
A government lawyer, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retaliation, said it was a terrifying time to be a federal worker.
She said people are worried that their phones and computers are being monitored. She’s a single mother with a young daughter, and her father is urging her to take a safer job in the private sector.
But she’s skeptical of the deferred resignation program, emphasizing that accepting the offer means workers can’t sue if they’re not paid what they’re promised.
The idea, she said, was insane.
