‘We Haven’t Discussed That’: Trump Pressed on Whether He Has Limits on Musk’s Powers
Billionaire is said to have personal information of the American people
Donald Trump hasn’t placed any limits on billionaire Elon Musk’s activities in the federal government.
That’s according to Trump, answering a reporter’s question Friday during a White House press conference.
Trump has unleashed Musk and his team against a growing list of federal agencies, including the departments of Treasury, Education and Energy.
During that effort, Musk reportedly attained access to a wide array of personal information of Americans, such as tax and Social Security information.
And Trump said that he has placed no limits on the billionaire who backed him ahead of the November election.
“Is there anything you’ve told Elon Musk he cannot touch?” asked Garrett Haake, of NBC News.
“Well, we haven’t discussed that much,” Trump replied. “I’ll tell him 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, if somebody gets tongue-tied, that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing. We have very smart people going. And so, I’ve instructed him go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along.
“And they’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things,” Trump added, adding no evidence to support his claims. “So — but I will pick out a target and I say go in. There could be areas that we won’t, but I think everything’s fertile. You know, we’re a government. We have to be open. And as an open government, I don’t, I guess you could say maybe some high intelligence or something. And I’ll do that myself if I have to.
“But generally speaking, I’ll just say go. But he will be looking at education pretty quickly and he will be looking at military, too.”
Haake followed up with: “As you know, both the federal spending is Social Security, Medicare, programs like that. Would you like to see him look at those programs as well?”
To which Trump responded, “Well, they don’t really have to be looked at by him. They could be looked at by us. Social Security will not be touched. It’ll only be strengthened. We have illegal immigrants on Social Security and we’re going to find out who they are and take them out. We have illegal immigrants in other, Medicare.”
He cited no specific ways he would strengthen Social Security and offered no evidence of undocumented migrants on Medicare.
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