President Donald Trump and Elon Musk sat down for a joint interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. They discussed the full-court press by Democratic lawmakers, the legacy media, and leftist federal judges to hinder the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team’s mission of identifying fraud within the federal government.
Trump said he once wrongly assumed that if he, as president, issued an executive order, it would be implemented. However, he soon realized that on many occasions, bureaucrats opposed to these measures simply refused to act.
His eyes have been opened since those days. Now older and wiser, Trump understands that nothing is more important than having the right people working under him to implement his policies. He needs federal employees he can trust to execute his orders, even if they personally disagree with them.
Acutely aware of the Left’s clumsy attempts to drive a wedge into their relationship, Trump praised Musk and said he “could not find anyone smarter” to lead DOGE.
Musk told Hannity he “loves” the president. He echoed Trump’s frustration with the resistance he has faced from disgruntled bureaucrats. He is “here to provide the president with — with technology support. … It’s a very important thing, because the president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country, but then they don’t get implemented, you know?
“One of the biggest functions of the DOGE team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out,” he said.
Musk then cut straight to the point: “If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.
“I think what we’re seeing here is the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people.”
Just one month into its work, DOGE has already uncovered a stunning degree of waste, fraud, and abuse inside the federal agencies.
From DOGE’s first revelations that exposed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as little more than a global slush fund for progressive causes, to it’s gobsmacking discovery that 25 million individuals over age 100 remain in the Social Security database even though there are fewer than 100,000 people aged 100 or older alive in the U.S. today, taxpayers have been stunned by its findings.
Democrats, fully aware that the shocking reports of corruption and waste are both accurate and well-documented, are scrambling to halt DOGE’s audit. However, hysteria has replaced rational thinking, leaving them without a coherent response. Unlike their more coordinated attacks on Trump – such as the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, and the politically motivated indictments brought by federal and state prosecutors – Democrats are now lashing out haphazardly, creating disastrous optics for their brand.
Their efforts to use far-left federal judges to prevent Musk’s team from accessing citizens’ sensitive information have yielded mixed results. While some lesser-known judges have shown willingness, higher-profile figures like U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan – who presided over Trump’s criminal election interference case in Washington, D.C. – have (at least initially) been reluctant to blow up their credibility based on nonsense.
Although Chutkan may change her mind if presented with “evidence” of irreparable harm in the future, she rejected a request from 14 state attorneys general on Tuesday to block DOGE from firing employees or accessing sensitive government records. In her ruling, she wrote that the states had failed to demonstrate immediate irreparable harm, emphasizing that the court cannot act based solely on media reports.
The notion that the judiciary should control the executive branch is utterly absurd – especially given the vast number of federal employees who routinely access such information in the normal course of their work. This hypocrisy becomes even more glaring when one considers the Biden administration’s 2021 proposal to force banks to report all transactions over $600 to the IRS, an egregious intrusion into citizens’ financial privacy.
After witnessing the Democrats’ “whatever it takes” tactics over the past decade, the majority of Americans are delighted by the DOGE audit. They are deeply interested in seeing where their tax dollars are going. The minority of voters who oppose the audit are those benefiting from the widespread abuses being uncovered. President Trump is delivering precisely what he promised during his campaign.
And Musk nailed it: If unelected bureaucrats can obstruct the president’s agenda, then we are living in a bureaucracy, rather than a democratic republic.
The Left’s collective meltdown is simply the “thrashing” of the bureaucracy.
[A full transcript of this interview can be read on the White House website.]
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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