President Donald Trump says he trusts Elon Musk and his DOGE initiative that has challenged career employees across the federal government and seemingly forced its way into sensitive systems at the Treasury and other agencies.
The president sat down this week for an extended interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, set to air ahead of the Super Bowl. In an excerpt released by the network ahead of broadcast, Trump is asked about his faith in Musk — whose DOGE team lacks any kind of congressional authorization or approval — and asserted that his newest billionaire best friend was not in a position to gain anything of value from his Cabinet-adjacent position.
“Bottom line, you say you trust him?” asked Baier.
“He’s not gaining anything from this,” Trump answered. “In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He’s so into it.”
The president also maintained his position that much of the bloated federal budget related to “kickbacks” and the kind of waste and fraud that hardline conservatives have long maintained is rampant within federal programs meant to assist Americans — everything from student loans to foreign aid.
“I ran on this,” said the president. “And the people want me to find it.”
The DOGE team’s effect on the federal government so far has thrown Democrats into a panic. Members of the party’s congressional delegation attempted without success to enter the Department of Education’s building in Washington several times over the past week, each time being turned away by guards who refused entry into the locked headquarters (which usually allows visitors into the lobby to speak to officials stationed at the front desk).
In his interview airing Sunday, Trump said that DOGE would find those “kickbacks” and other waste at the Department of Education, while vowing that they would be sent to slash spending at the Pentagon as well.
“He’s going to find the same thing [at Education]. Then I’m going to go to the military, let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse.”
Operating under a self-imposed shroud of secrecy, Musk’s team has been engaged in sudden and drastic changes across the federal government. DOGE staffers moved to implement Trump’s vision of completely shuttering the United States Agency for International Development, the main government agency overseeing the US’s foreign aid programs, while seemingly poised to attempt similar teardowns at other government agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But the efforts lack any basis in legislation approved by Congress and as such are being carried out under uncertain legal authority. Lawsuits have been filed by Democratic attorneys general around the country aimed at halting or reversing the shuttering of whole agencies and, in general, curbing the access and influence DOGE staffers have at federal agencies. One of those lawsuits bore some success on Saturday as a federal judge ordered DOGE staffers to cease accessing sensitive systems at the Treasury responsible for disbursing payments across the federal government.
Those staffers were also ordered to delete any data acquired from their usage of the Treasury’s systems.
The reaction on the right was swift and unsurprising. Musk tore into the judge as “corrupt” in a series of tweets while Vice President JD Vance seemingly suggested in his own post on Sunday that the Trump administration is considering ignoring court orders issued by federal judges when Trump and his team disagree with the rulings.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” wrote the vice president.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal.
Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalised but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations.
The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis. The email also ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.”
Since the CFPB is a creation of Congress, it would require a separate act of Congress to formally eliminate it. But the head of the agency has discretion over what enforcement actions to take, if any.
Yet Elon Musk commented, “CFPB RIP” on social media site X on Friday. And the CFPB homepage on the Internet was down on Sunday, replaced by a message reading “page not found.”
Also late on Saturday, Vought said in a social media post that the CFPB would no longer withdraw funds from the Federal Reserve, adding that its current financing of $711.6 million is “excessive.” Congress directed the bureau to be funded by the Fed to insulate it from political pressures.
“This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off,” Vought said on X.
The CFPB says that it has obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for US consumers since its founding in the form of cancelled debts, compensation, and reduced loans. Last month, the bureau sued Capital One for allegedly misleading consumers about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts — and “cheating” customers out of more than $2 billion in lost interest payments as a result.
Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, an advocacy group, said, “that’s why Wall Street’s biggest banks and Trump’s billionaire allies hate the bureau: it’s an effective cop on the finance beat and has stood side-by-side with hundreds of millions of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — battling financial predators, scammers, and crooks”.