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The fact that Donald Trump and Elon Musk sat down together for a joint appearance on Fox News was itself extraordinary. Never before have Americans seen a nationally televised interview featuring an incumbent president and his top campaign donor.
Nevertheless, toward the end of the interview, host Sean Hannity asked Musk whether he intended to remain in his White House position for the entirety of Trump’s four-year second term. The question went largely unanswered, but as part of the exchange, the president said Musk is “under a pretty big microscope.” His megadonor agreed:
The possibility of me getting away with something is 0% — 0.0. I’m scrutinized to a ridiculous degree. And the other thing is, you know what’s better than saying ‘trust me’ is just full transparency. So, what we’re doing with the DOGE, just go to DOGE.gov. You can see every single action that’s being taken.
The idea of “full transparency” at the White House and the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency certainly sounds nice. Especially given Trump’s track record of hiding his tax returns and his medical records, among other things, it would also be a pleasant change of pace.
But there’s no reason to take Musk’s rhetoric seriously.
This is after, the same billionaire who said identifying DOGE employees by name is “illegal.” The White House has also said that Musk is effectively responsible for privately self-policing his own conflicts of interest, which is a far cry from “full transparency.”
What’s more, Bloomberg Business’ Jason Leopold recently noted, “The lack of transparency surrounding DOGE’s efforts is off the charts. The DOGE team members appeared at the agency’s Washington headquarters, and carried out work in a basement conference room where they covered its windows in paper.”
A couple of days earlier, The New York Times reported that the entire DOGE initiative has been “operating in deep secrecy.” The article added, “Mr. Musk himself is a ‘special government employee,’ which, the White House has said, means his financial disclosure filing will not be made public.”
It led The Atlantic’s Jon Chait to note that the fact that Musk’s financial disclosures will remain hidden allows “the shadow president to direct vast swaths of government policy with enormous stakes for his personal fortune without the public knowing the precise areas of overlap.”
The Times separately reported two weeks ago, "The White House has designated Mr. Musk’s office, United States DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention until at least 2034, by declaring the documents it produces and receives presidential records."
The day the Times report was published, the White House announced that its visitor logs will also be kept under wraps, out of public view.
Last week, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma declared online, “I don’t want to hear the word ‘transparency’ from any more liberals.”
In the hopes of proving his point, the GOP senator said that Trump frequently appears in public and answers questions from reporters. That’s true, but it’s also irrelevant: “Transparency” does not mean “saying a bunch of things in public.”
A White House that takes “full transparency” seriously would be doing largely the opposite of what Trump and Musk are doing now.