Musk disputes the declare that his work heading DOGE conflicts along with his non-public holdings, contending on the Feb. 12 White House briefing that “we really are attempting to be as clear as attainable.”
A reporter then requested:
You’ve acquired billions of {dollars} in federal contracts on the subject of the Pentagon, for example, which the president, I do know, has directed you to look into. Are you policing your self on that?
Musk replied:
Nicely, all of our actions are totally public. So when you see something, you say, “Wait a second. Hey, that looks like perhaps there’s a battle there.” I don’t really feel like persons are going to be shy about saying that. They’ll say it instantly.
Then Trump interjected:
We’d not let him do this phase or look in that space if we thought there was an absence of transparency or a battle of curiosity. We watch that additionally. He’s an enormous businessman. He’s a profitable man. That’s why we would like him doing this. We don’t need an unsuccessful man doing this.
The alternate is especially revealing in what it says about Trump’s ethical reasoning and its similarity to Musk’s pondering.
The very fact is that Musk’s conflicts of curiosity heading DOGE have been repeatedly identified not solely by reporting on this newspaper but in addition elsewhere, from USA Today to Fortune and by Democrats within the House and Senate.
These claims of transparency, which have also been challenged, are deemed by Trump and Musk to be satisfactory to guard in opposition to abuse, even when the potential for abuse is manifestly apparent.
Brooke Harrington, a sociologist at Dartmouth, has been learning wealth, energy and the rise of oligarchs for the reason that flip of the century. In a telephone interview, she stated {that a}
tech broligarchy has successfully purchased the presidency. Trump will get to be chairman of the board, minimize the ribbons in day-to-day ceremonies, whereas management of the construction of presidency is left to them, in what quantities to a hostile takeover of the federal authorities.
Harrington was much more direct in an look with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” the night time after Trump was inaugurated, when she in contrast the connection between Vladimir Putin and his wealthy supporters with Trump’s relationship to the rich males who backed his 2024 marketing campaign:
At the very least Putin has a pink line along with his oligarchs. The grand discount was that he was going to allow them to get wealthy provided that they saved their noses out of his political enterprise. At most, they’d be his errand boys.
What Trump has achieved is so extraordinary. He doesn’t have that brilliant line with the brand new oligarchs of America in any respect. He principally stated, “You got it. Do what you need.”
Musk, in actual fact, has begun to unfold his wings nicely past American borders and has change into a serious participant in far-right, anti-immigrant events in Europe, together with Reform U.K. in Britain and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) social gathering.
