Donald Trump has indicated that Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is operating without guardrails after it gained access to Americans’ private information “very easily” and prepares to assail the Pentagon.
The US president was speaking at a White House press conference alongside Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister of Japan, but most of the questions focused on Musk’s sweeping mission to root out waste in the federal government, which has caused disarray in Washington.
Trump suggested that he has given the tech billionaire free rein and appeared blase about the details. Asked why Doge needs access to treasury payment systems including Americans’ social security numbers, home addresses and bank accounts, he replied: “Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily. We don’t have very good security in our country.”
The president claimed that he was “very proud” of Musk’s team of young and “very smart” software engineers. He said: “They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption and we’ve found tremendous corruption.”
Doge has so far produced no evidence of corruption at USAid, which it shuttered without seeking the required authority from Congress, or other agencies. Its fast and furious assault on the government has resulted in a flurry of lawsuits and street protests.
Pressed on whether there was anything he has told Musk he cannot touch, Trump offered only a vague reply. “Well, we haven’t discussed that much,” he confessed. “I’ll tell them to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people. Very, very, very, very capable.
“They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately as somebody gets tongue-tied that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing. We have very smart people going.”
Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk – the world’s richest man – to review spending in the sprawling defence department, which has a proposed budget for 2025 of $850bn. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad.”
But he added pointedly: “Social security will not be touched. It will only be strengthened … we have illegal immigrants on social security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them off.”
Democrats in Congress are seeking a treasury department investigation of the access that Musk’s team was given to the government’s payment system, citing “threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data”.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to inspectors general: “Given the threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data posed by Mr Musk and his team’s reported access to critical federal payment systems … we request that you use your authorities to investigate this matter further.”
On Friday, Trump also said Doge should rehire a staff member who resigned after being linked by a newspaper report to an openly racist social media account.
First JD Vance, the vice-president, said Marko Elez, 25, should be brought back and blamed “journalists who try to destroy people”. Asked whether he endorsed Vance’s view, Trump told reporters he was not aware of the specific case but “I’m with the vice-president”.
Soon after Musk, who had polled his X followers on the question, posted: “He will be brought back. To err is human, to forgive divine.”
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