Noor-E-Sahed Ahmed

The Department of Government Efficiency is a government agency created to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda regarding spending cuts to better utilize taxpayer money. Measures to reduce spending are necessary to mitigate the rampant increase in the American national debt, which is currently $36 trillion.

Despite his role in the conception of DOGE, Elon Musk is not the man to bring about these changes. Musk’s recent Oval Office press conference was a clear display of his unfitness for a government role with unchecked power.

During Trump’s presidential campaign, he addressed the fact that he would take measures to reduce the national debt by appointing Musk to an advisory role focused on reducing unnecessary spending. Together, Trump and Musk developed the idea for DOGE and announced it in November 2024, a week after Trump’s election victory.

Regardless, Musk should not be running the organization due to significant conflicts of interest regarding government contracts. Part of DOGE’s role is to evaluate government contracts; this is reasonable until DOGE demonstrates that it has the power to cancel government contracts with little resistance. Meanwhile, Musk makes $8 million daily from said contracts.

This is cause for concern with respect to Musk’s companies. Since he controls DOGE, there is little stopping him from canceling government contracts with competitors to his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, and undermining his business rivals. As shown through his Oval Office press conference, the primary oversight of DOGE’s actions is public scrutiny, which Musk vaguely explained.

Musk is often complimented on his business acumen due to the success of SpaceX and Tesla, which were his ideas but executed by experts he hired personally.

Despite this, he is not qualified to run a government organization. This was proved by his lack of professionalism and several untrue statements he made throughout the press conference. The first thing that immediately stood out about this conference was the presence of Musk’s son, X Æ A-12. Throughout the meeting, X was seen to be causing minor disruptions — such as whispering to Trump, interrupting Musk as he spoke and putting his fingers in Musk’s ears, causing Musk to claim it was difficult for him to hear some questions.

Musk’s choice to bring his son to this event demonstrates his lack of professionalism toward his position within the government, considering the absence of precedent for his decision. As he spoke, Musk also made several false statements while expressing disregard for the consequences of his imprecision.

A reporter addressed the fact that he incorrectly claimed the U.S. had sent $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas. In reality, the condoms had been sent to Gaza for HIV prevention.

Musk stated that “some of the things [he says] will be incorrect,” and as a result of the speed at which DOGE is making changes, “[they] will make mistakes, but [they] will also fix the mistakes quickly.” The problem is, depending on the mistakes, without oversight, significant damage could be made before he can correct them.