‘I’m Not Going to Reveal the Name!’ Trump Press Secretary Refuses Multiple Times to Say Who Officially Runs DOGE
White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt again refused to produce the name of the person running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — under pointed questioning from reporters in the White House press corps.
Early on in Tuesday’s briefing, Leavitt fielded a question from CBS News White House correspondent Nancy Cordes — who inquired about the identity of the DOGE administrator, which the White House has said, in legal filings, is not Elon Musk.
“The president’s executive order creating DOGE called for the naming of a DOGE administrator,” Cordes said. “Who is the DOGE administrator?”
“So the president tasked Elon Musk to oversee the DOGE effort,” Leavitt said. “There are career officials, and there are political appointees who are helping run DOGE on a day-to-day basis. There are also individuals who have onboarded as political appointees at every agency across the board to work alongside President Trump’s cabinet to find and identify waste, fraud and abuse. And they are working on that effort every day.”
“So is Elon Musk the administrator?” Cordes asked, following up.
Leavitt briskly ducked the follow-up, instead calling on a reporter from the Daily Caller.
Later, another reporter tried to get Leavitt to produce a name — and had similar luck.
“A federal judge yesterday was saying that they didn’t know who the DOGE administrator was, and was asking the the lawyer for the administration who it was,” the reporter said. “And the lawyer responded, I don’t know the answer to that. Can you tell us who the administrator of DOGE is?”
“Again, I’ve been asked and answered this question,” Leavitt said. “Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE.”
“So he’s the administrator?” The reporter asked.
“No, Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I’ve also been asked and have answered that question as well,” Leavitt said. “There are career officials at DOGE, there are political appointees at DOGE. I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium! I’m happy to follow up and provide that to you. But we’ve been incredibly transparent about the way the DOGE is working.”
The question of who is officially running DOGE has been very much a mystery for days. In a sworn affidavit last week, Joshua Fisher — the director of the White House’s Office of Administration — identified Musk as “not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or the U.S. DOGE Service temporary organization.”
“Mr. Musk is an employee of the White House office,” Fisher wrote. “He holds that position as a non-career Special Government Employee (“SGE”). In that job, Mr. Musk is a Senior Advisor to the President.”
Fisher added that Musk has “no actual authority to make government decisions himself.”
That left open the question of who is technically in charge — a question Leavitt refused to answer last Tuesday, and evaded again twice during this Tuesday’s briefing.
The effort to officially distance Musk from DOGE is seemingly an attempt to wall him off from legal scrutiny, as numerous lawsuits about DOGE’s maneuverings make their way through the courts. Federal judges, however, have cast skepticism about the White House claim that Musk does not have an official role with DOGE.
And the words of Trump himself likewise have made it difficult for the White House to claim Musk is not the man running the show.
“I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge,” Trump said.
Watch above, via Fox News.
UPDATE 3:40 p.m. ET — Semafor’s Shelby Talcott reports that the White House has now identified Amy Gleason as the interim administrator of DOGE.
Gleason is a former official of the U.S. Digital Service — the agency which was rebranded as DOGE — who served during the first Trump administration.
