Elon Musk Asked Four Times If There Are Any Conflicts of Interests Between His Businesses and DOGE

In an unusual Oval Office press conference with President Donald Trump Tuesday, Elon Musk spoke to gathered reporters about his work with DOGE, getting asked four times about potential conflicts of interest.

Companies owned by Musk currently have billions of dollars worth of contracts with the federal government. Critics of the world’s richest man exerting such influence over federal spending as an unelected official have argued that he has clear conflicts of interest, but the Trump administration has insisted it will be fine for Musk to police himself on these matters.

“Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have,” a reporter asked. “Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?”

Musk’s reply:

Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions — we post our actions to the DOGE handle, uh, on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.

Um, and so, you know, and the kind of things we’re doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. They’re not — we’re — you know, what I mentioned, for example, about Treasury, just making sure that that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out is categorized correctly, that, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the do not pay list, which are — takes a lot to get there — they actually are not paid, which currently they are paid.

These, these are, these are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it’s got nothing to do with like say, a contract for some company of mine at all.

“But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you, yourself,” the reporter followed up, “for instance, you’ve received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president, I know has directed you to look into, are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?”

“Well, all of our actions are, are fully public,” Musk said. “So if you see anything — you say like, ‘Wait a second. Hey, Elon, that doesn’t — that seems like maybe that’s, you know, there’s a conflict there.’ I — it’s not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They’ll say it immediately, you know.”

“Including you, yourself?” the reporter asked.

“Yes,” said Musk. “But it’s — what transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust. It’s not somebody saying they’re trustworthy, but transparency. So you can see everything that’s going on, and then you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It’s totally obvious.”

Trump spoke up at this point to defend Musk, saying that “we would not let him do that segment or look in that area, if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest” and arguing that the SpaceX CEO was “a big businessman” and “successful guy.”

Later in the presser, the reporter asked Musk for a fourth time about the conflicts of interest issue.

“I need to ask a follow-up to the Pentagon contracts,” she said. “If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon, and the president is directing you to look into the Department of Defense, is that –”

“– We definitely need to do it,” Musk interjected, “and we are going to do, at the president’s request.”

“Does that present a conflict of interest for you?” the reporter asked.

“Uh, no,” Musk answered, “because you’d have to look at the individual contract and say — first of all, I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract. It’s people at SpaceX or someone that will be putting forward the contract. And I’d like to say, if you see any contract where the, the — where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn’t by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.”

Watch the clips above via CNN.

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