US President Donald Trump said he expects Elon Musk To find hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud and pentagon abuse during an audit that the billionaire will direct.
“I will tell him very soon, as maybe in 24 hours, to check the Ministry of Education. … So I’m going to go, go to the military. Check the military, ”said Trump in an interview with the Super Bowl with Bret Bret from Fox News, an extract of which was broadcast on Sunday morning.
“We are going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud and abuse,” said Trump about the largest federal department.
The pentagon budget approaches $ 1 billion per year. In December, the president of the time, Joe Biden, signed a bill authorizing $ 895 billion in defense expenses for the financial year ending on September 30.
Musk, who, according to the White House, is a special government employee, was responsible for Trump to make an effort to Slash the size of the American federal workforce. As part of this initiative, Musk aid requested access to confidential information in IT systems in various government agencies.
Critics say that the efforts are probably illegal, the risk of exposing classified information and, in practice, targets entire agencies without approval from the congress.
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National Security Advisor Mike Waltz suggested on Sunday in a separate interview that the Pentagon shipbuilding could be a particular area of interest in the Ministry of Government (DOGE), and he characterized Pentagon in general as full of unnecessary bloating.
“All that is to cost too much, take too much time and deliver too little to soldiers … We need business leaders to go there and absolutely reform the process of acquiring the Pentagon”, a declared Waltz in an interview on NBC Meet the press.
“There is much to examine in shipbuilding, which is an absolute mess,” added Waltz.
The leaders of the whole political spectrum have long criticized waste and ineffectiveness in the Pentagon. But the Democrats and the public service unions say that musks DOGE The expertise is missing to restructure the Pentagon and their efforts are likely to exhibit classified programs.
Musk companies also have major contracts with the Pentagon, which has raised major problems of conflict of interest.