Elon Musk gave a bizarre, fact-free press conference next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday, promising truth and transparency as he smashes the U.S. government to smithereens. But there was one comment that has been largely overlooked from the strange spectacle: Musk said DOGE was being transparent by providing information on the DOGE website. Except that there’s nothing there.
Musk was asked by a reporter about his major conflicts of interest, given the fact that the billionaire is currently rooting around government agencies where he derives billions in contracts through companies like SpaceX.
“Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have,” one reporter asked. “Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?”
Musk insisted there was no problem with the fact that he was policing himself. And went on to insist DOGE was being transparent in every possible way.
“In fact, our actions… we post our actions to the DOGE Handle on X and to the Doge website,” Musk said. “So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been, I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the Doge organization.”
The X account for DOGE does indeed post things, though they’re often misleading or outright lies. But the website Musk identifies is empty. You can check for yourself. The domain is DOGE.gov, the kind of site where Musk could hypothetically be posting all kinds of information about the work he and his goons are doing right now. But there’s nothing except three lines of text.
The top of the website reads “An official website of the United States government.” Then there’s the name of the group, “Department of Government Efficiency.” And then you’ve got one more line, “The people voted for major reform.” There’s also a logo that’s just a dollar sign, which has replaced the shiba inu DOGE logo that appeared when the website first launched.
The press conference, which is available in its entirety on YouTube, really was odd in many respects. Musk spent most of his time saying things that simply weren’t true about “fraud” he identified at various government agencies. But he’s presented precisely zero evidence thus far that DOGE has identified any fraud. Everything posted on social media by the billionaire he’s claimed is fraudulent was actually just a program that was authorized by Congress that he didn’t like.
But there was one area where Musk admitted he was wrong. A reporter asked the Tesla CEO about his claim that DOGE had identified $50 million worth of condoms that had been sent to Hamas in Gaza. The reporter noted that after some fact-checking, it appeared there was a city called Hamas, Mozambique where U.S.-funded HIV prevention efforts had sent condoms.
“Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody’s going to bet a thousand,” Musk said. “I mean, any, you know, we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”
But then Musk revealed his true intention, claiming that everything he found was suspicious or fraudulent.
“So, you know, if the… I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million with the condoms to anywhere, frankly,” Musk said. “I’m not sure that’s something Americans would be really excited about. And that is really an enormous number of condoms, if you think about it. But, you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, okay, that’s not as bad, but still, you know, why are we doing that?”
And there you have it. Musk is storming through the federal government right now, illegally shutting down entire agencies like USAID and the Department of Education while shouting “fraud.” But the reality is that all of these things were authorized by Congress and can only be legally withheld by Congress.
None of that seems like it’s going to stop Musk from absolutely pillaging the federal government and throwing a lot of good people out of work. A federal judge in Rhode Island in one of the many cases against Trump and Musk’s illegal actions said Tuesday that the federal government was not obeying an order to unfreeze funds. And disobeying court orders seems to be par for the course with the Trump administration. NBC News reported that an official at FEMA had instructed staff to freeze funds after an order had come down Monday specifically telling them not to.
The problem, of course, is that the courts don’t have people with guns to enforce their orders. Anyone who may hypothetically enforce a judge’s ruling would currently be under President Trump’s control, whether it was the FBI or the U.S. Marshals, both of whom fall under the umbrella of the U.S. Justice Department.
The constitutional crisis is real. Nobody can force Trump and Musk to obey the courts. Laws are fake. Good luck, everybody. We’re going to need it.
Update, 3:25 pm ET: The DOGE website appears to have added some content on Wednesday, though it’s pretty bare bones to say the least. The landing page is just a stream of tweets already on X. And the “Savings” tab just reads, “Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine’s day,” as you can see in the screenshot below.
Pages like “Regulations” include the number of words in various agency rules, a meaningless metric that some toddlers may find impressive. And the “Join” tab just clearly wants to harvest your information. The “About” tab redirects to Trump’s executive order which illegally gives Elon Musk oversight over federal agencies he has no authority over.
Great job, team. You’re really knocking it out of the park.
