Government expert on Elon Musk and DOGE’s “slash-and-burn exercise”
Last Tuesday, it was an amazing moment: President Trump stood next to a shiny electric car next to the White House, promoting the car manufacturer Elon Musk: “This guy is committed to doing this.
For Musk – Who spends it About $300 million Help Trump win the White House, reportedly Promise more millions For Trump’s political efforts – this is a promotion Tesla’s imageand the president’s solidarity. As he climbed into the driver’s seat, Mr. Trump said: “Everything is a computer!”
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images 
Tesla protests nationwide It has been a response to the Ministry of Government Efficiency initiative, called Doge. As the helm, Musk has been The President’s Confidant, Cost and Government Contractor all of a sudden.
Katie Drummond when asked about the possible conflict of interest when it comes to Musk’s role in the Trump administration wired (The technical publication on Musk and his associates’ recent shovel score) said: “It’s obvious that there is a conflict of interest in general. I mean, Elon Musk himself is a huge conflict of interest.
“When you think about SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, you think about all the companies that regulate and oversee different agencies of the federal government in some way, form or form,” Drummond said. “Then you remember the people who own and run all of these companies are flying the Air Force with President Trump. Of course, it’s a conflict of interest.”
After years of covering Silicon Valley, Wired is ready to cover the political rise of tech billionaires. (Last year, the magazine endorsed Trump’s rival Kamala Harris.)
But in January, at Trump’s inauguration were Musk and other Silicon Valley billionaires.
Julia DeMaree Nikhinson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images 
Asked if this represents a new force structure in this country, Drummond said: “It’s a force structure that has grown for a while for a while. But I think the inauguration is such a distinct moment of realization – I think it should be a moment of realization for everyone in the United States – about who actually operates this country.”
Who is running it? Elon Musk? Or President Trump?
“Technology industry,” Drummond replied. “You’re going to think about the trillions of dollars involved in all these companies and these businesses. The technology industry has a lot of power, and when you’re essentially combining it with the federal government, or at least willing to work hand in hand with the Trump administration, what we’re going to see is.”
Newt Gingrich is a former Republican spokesman for the House and a longtime Trump ally. Asked if he was concerned about possible conflicts of interest given the many business deals of the world’s wealthiest people with the federal government, Gingrich said: “Well, I think you always have to look into any dangers of conflicts of interest with anyone.
Asked who has oversight of Musk on this point, Gingrich replied: “Donald J. Trump. He is the CEO of the United States. He is elected by the American people and he is the president of the United States.”
Gingrich became a household name thirty years ago because he himself promoted efforts to narrow the federal government. When asked about the difference today, Gingrich believes the government is now “much more ill”, compared to 1995. “Its bureaucracy has grown tremendously, the tremendous growth of left-wing ideology, and the greater deficit,” he said. “Trump has been running for 10 years. He found a motivation, resilience, wisdom in Elon Musk, the wisdom that really fundamentally captures the ‘deep state’ and changes it in ways that are usually unimaginable.”
In the 1990s, Gingrich imposed forced conservative budget cuts on President Bill Clinton’s democratic management. But in the Clinton era, most reforms only took place after months of deliberation and Congressional action – in stark contrast to what happened today.
“Let’s be clear: to be honest, some people will be hurt,” Gingrich said of the federal program and extensive cuts in almost every agency’s agency. “There may be some people who may not be doing this. There may be some contracts that may not be discarded.”
I said, “Or something that happens where the government is not working well.”
“The question you have to ask yourself is, even if the risk of fixing is something is not exactly a hundred percent thing, does the system need to solve this system?” Gingrich said. “Because you slowed down enough to avoid any possible mistakes, you did nothing.”
But Elaine Kamarck, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, retorted: “You can’t just start rejecting the entire worker.”
If the government table goes bankrupt, what will be the result? “People will die,” Carmack said. “It’s so serious.”
In the 1990s, Karmack was actually a colleague of the Clinton administration and Gingrich, managing the so-called Rego: Reshaping the government. She said this is very different from what Doge and Doge and White House implemented. “What Musk is doing, Trump is they testing the limitations of executive power in ways we don’t,” she said. “We browsed it in the old-fashioned way: If we think we need to change the law, we go to Congress and ask them to change it.”
When asked whether Democrats should work with Musk and President Trump when they tried with Republicans in the 90s, Karmack said: “I think Democrats should definitely do their best. I think they should try to work with Musk. The problem is the complete lack of transparency. We don’t know who they cut. Why They are cutting. Did they say these people were wasted? What do you mean? What are they doing is wasting taxpayers’ money? We have nothing to gain.
“It’s just a practice of cutting and burning,” Karmack said. “It’s not a well-thought-out exercise.”
David Ryder/Blooomberg by Getty Images 
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to CBS Sunday Morning that Docci was “very transparent”, “President Trump said he would not allow conflict, while Elon himself promised to evacuate himself from potential conflict.”
But Wired’s Katie Drummond said the concerns about Musk have not disappeared… and Elon Musk still has the ability.
“It’s clear that I think his work ethics and his ambitions are limitless for anyone watching Elon Musk and how he works at any time,” Drummond said. “I think that as long as Elon Musk is involved in this transformation, we really only have the possibility of a shift in the possibility of these federal agencies that are likely to become federal infrastructure.”
For more information:
Ed’s forgetting story. Editor: Remington Korper.
