President Donald Trump spoke to reporters at Mar-a-Lago this week and did not mince his words when asked about a few hot-button issues.
Trump spoke to reporters in a photo op at Mar-a-Lago as he signed executive actions and spoke about billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
One exchange went viral after a reporter tried to ask Trump a “gotcha” question about Musk and his actual “title” at DOGE.
Trump responded by pulling out a piece of paper and listing off several of the recent findings by DOGE, which showed even more waste, fraud, and abuse that the American people want to eliminate.
Below is a transcript of the exchange:
REPORTER: In a court filing, the White House said that Elon Musk is not a DOGE employee and has no authority to make decisions. Can you clarify for us today (inaudible)?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Elon Musk is. Yeah. Yeah, Elon is to me a patriot. So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want. But he’s a patriot.
I mean, look at the kind of things I just said. So just in case that question got elsewhere. And which I’m surprised it took so long, actually. But you know what? Ukraine is a bigger deal because people are dying by the thousands a week. Thousands.
But look at this, from 90 to 99. Social Security, 6 million, 54,000 people. Well, that’s okay. Maybe that’s possible. You know, 92, to 90, 99, maybe it’s possible. That’s a lot of people, though, at that.
But people that live to 100 to 109, 4,734,000. Wow. That’s a lot. That means over 100 years old. 4 million people. I don’t know. I know there’s so many. I know people that are doing great in their 90s, but not too many people over 100, but over 120 from 120 years old. People that are 120 years old, up to 129, 3,472,000 people.
Wow! You know, that can’t possibly be because the record is like I think as one person, a woman lived to 127, but they have 3472.
Okay. But now we’re going really in people from 130 years old to 139 year old, 3,936,000. Wow. I wonder if people are getting paid with all this. I mean, are these checks And that’s what we’re checking right now.
WATCH:
Musk and his team have been given access to vital financial information for a slew of additional federal agencies following a court win on Tuesday, as a member of the DOGE squad also prepares to receive data on Internal Revenue Service operations.
“The I.R.S. is preparing to give Gavin Kliger, a young software engineer working with [DOGE], access to sensitive taxpayer information as a senior adviser to the I.R.S.’s acting commissioner. The I.R.S. is still working out the terms of his assignment,” The New York Times reported.
Critics have expressed concerns that such actions would grant Musk and his operation unprecedented oversight. Lily Batchelder, a Treasury Department official during the Biden administration, noted on X that she could not recall political appointees ever having access to the IRS database, the outlet continued.
A major worry is the potential for using this access to target political opponents or leak private citizens’ data. Batchelder warned that such a move could violate federal laws prohibiting executive branch interference in taxpayer audits. Meanwhile, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have demanded further details on the extent of access granted, The Times added.
While Democrats and their allies in the legacy media continue to claim — so far without any evidence — that Musk and his DOGE team will be “accessing sensitive taxpayer information” and could leak it, The Times report did note that actually happened recently — to Musk. His 2014-2018 tax returns, along with those of other billionaires the left doesn’t like, were leaked by an IRS official to the outlet ProPublica in 2021.
President Donald Trump, who appointed Musk to his role, remains fully committed to the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder’s mission.
“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
