Washington (AFP) – US President Donald Trump said in remarks aired Sunday that Elon Musk, who is presiding over a purge of government jobs, will help find “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal agencies. Speaking in a Fox News interview aired before the Super Bowl football championship, Trump said the American people “want me to find” waste and that Musk, the world’s richest man and the leader of the president’s cost-cutting efforts, has been “a great help” in rooting out unnecessary spending.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier. During his three weeks in office, the president has unleashed a flurry of executive orders aimed at slashing federal spending. He has appointed SpaceX and Tesla boss Musk to lead his federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The administration has highlighted several government projects Trump believes should be ended or curtailed, but evidence of any widespread illegal activity or fraud has not been presented. Musk has already taken unprecedented steps to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), laying off thousands of employees.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered a temporary pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave. In the interview, Trump claimed there was “hundreds of millions of dollars of money that’s going to places where it shouldn’t be going.” Trump said in his interview that over the next day or so he will order Musk to turn his government scalpel to the Department of Education, a frequent target of Republican ire. “Then I’m going to go to the military,” Trump said, reiterating his call for a review of spending at the Pentagon, whose budget totals some $850 billion.
Trump also doubled down on a scheme to annex Canada, saying the United States’ northern neighbor “would be much better off being a 51st state, because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada.” Since taking office, Trump has characterized billions of dollars in daily bilateral trade as a US “subsidy” and claimed without evidence that Canada would not be “a viable country” without it. Trump threatened Canada and Mexico with a 25-percent tariff on all imports, suspending the measures after striking deals with both countries on plans to curb illegal immigration and the trafficking of fentanyl into the United States. Both countries secured a one-month delay after the 11th-hour talks with Trump, but on Sunday, the US leader warned what had been done so far was “not enough.”
“Something has to happen, it’s not sustainable, and I’m changing it,” he said, when asked if both countries needed to do more before the 30-day deadline.
– ‘Evisceration of democracy’ –
The role of Musk, a top Trump donor and ally, in the president’s projects has faced criticism in part because his companies have had billions of dollars in contracts with the US government — more than $20 billion, according to House Democrat Mark Pocan. Asked whether he trusts Musk to fairly root out wasteful spending, Trump appeared to assert that the wealthy entrepreneur and his businesses are not benefiting financially through Musk’s work with DOGE. “He’s not gaining anything,” Trump said.
Democrats have lined up to slam Trump’s various efforts, including Senator Chris Murphy, who on Sunday warned of an “assault on the Constitution” and said Trump was ushering in a “billionaire takeover of government.” “The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy,” Murphy told ABC News talk show “This Week.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican in Congress, has repeatedly downplayed concerns that Trump is exceeding his authority or rushing too quickly to overhaul the federal government, including agencies like USAID. “I’m not uncomfortable with the pace of this,” Johnson told “Fox News Sunday.” The speaker described Musk as “an outside auditor” whose team is uncovering “incredible abuses of the public fisc,” referring to the total amount of money a government has to spend. Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz declined to say Sunday whether he believed it was a conflict of interest to have Musk, whose companies hold government defense contracts, oversee cost-cutting at the Pentagon. “Everything there seems to cost too much, take too long, and deliver too little to the soldiers,” Waltz told NBC of Pentagon expenses.
En route to the Super Bowl, Trump flew over the Gulf of Mexico, which he has ordered renamed the “Gulf of America,” and signed a proclamation recognizing February 9 as “Gulf of America Day.”
© 2024 AFP
