Trump's Trials - Elon Musk's role in government raises conflict-of-interest issues

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Elon Musk is working to slash federal spending while also promoting his business ventures. Experts in government ethics are worried he's acting in his own best interest and not in the country's, as NPR's Tamara Keith reports. Support NPR and hear every episode sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I would love to have someone who took care of my car or someone who cleaned up the dishes after dinner, but then I'd want them to leave. From yourself to your dog to your spouse are significant others. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin. Members of Elon Musk's Doge team are continuing their march through government agencies on what they say is a mission to find fraud and wasteful spending.

Musk himself is often seen at President Trump's side, who praises him frequently. And Elon Musk has done an amazing job. I have to tell you, him and his super geniuses, you know, these are seriously high IQ people. Musk is classified as a special government employee. That's a role created by Congress in the 1960s that allows parts of the federal government to bring someone on for a specific role on a temporary basis. He is also a tech billionaire and as NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports the line between those roles is blurry. We've got one more surprise in case this

wasn't enough. I'm going to let Elon do it. Elon Musk was a surprise guest at the Conservative political action conference outside of Washington, D.C. yesterday. And as part of his introduction, the president of Argentina walked out on stage to give him a red and chrome chainsaw. President Malay has a gift for me. Musk waved it excitedly. This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.

Chainsaw! Taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy is what Musk claims to be doing with his project known as the Department of Government Efficiency. But last week, when he met with Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, it wasn't initially clear whether he was there as a member of the Trump administration or as the CEO of Tesla, which is looking to expand in India.

Breaking news coming in, we're getting a reaction from Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his meeting with Ilon Musk. He's taken to social media platform X2C. It was a delight to meet him. He's taking to social media platform X to say it was a delight to me. Presenters on India Today speculated about whether they had discussed Tesla or Doge. A White House official says Musk met with Modi in his personal capacity. Later though, he was in the Oval Office for Trump's meeting with Modi. In frequent posts on his social media site X, Musk ping-pongs between talking about his work slashing government and promoting his business ventures, many of which have government contracts or are regulated by federal agencies. But Trump and Musk dismissed concerns about possible conflicts of interest

in a Fox News interview with Sean Hannity. I mean, I haven't asked the president for anything ever. And if it comes up, how will you handle it? Well, he won't be involved. Yeah, I'll recuse myself if it is. If there's a conflict, he won't be involved. I mean, I wouldn't want that, and he won't want it. That did not assuage the concerns of Don Fox. He was the top lawyer at the Office of Government Ethics

during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Musk seems to be in a position with the White House's consent that he can just change hats by the hour as it suits him. The White House says Musk will file a confidential disclosure of his financial interests with the Office of Government Ethics by the end of next month and has been briefed on ethics requirements. As a special government employee, a temporary role, he doesn't have to divest from his businesses, but he is supposed to recuse himself when necessary. Fox says there's little indication the normal process to avoid conflicts is being followed. The thing that the public should be concerned about is, well, we don't know.

Is he looking after our interests as taxpayers and citizens, or is he looking after his own business interests? These questions about Musk come up as Trump just fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, along with other watchdogs. Richard Brafalt specializes in government ethics at Columbia Law School and describes Musk as basically a walking conflict of interest. Whatever the guardrails, and I guess that phrase guardrails has been used a lot, but whatever the guardrails are there in terms of preventing public officials from engaging

in self-dealing, enforcement seems to be gone. A White House official not authorized to speak about this publicly dismissed the criticisms as partisan, saying there is no concern in the White House about whether Musk will follow strict ethics rules. Tamara Keith, NPR News. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news, with new episodes every weekday afternoon.

And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to Trump's terms from NPR. There's been a lot of attention on loneliness lately. 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time.

The former Surgeon General even declared a loneliness epidemic. On It's Been a Minute, we're launching a new series called All the Lonely People, diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it. That's on the It's Been a Minute podcast on NPR. Hey, it's Amartinez. I work on a news show. And yeah, the news can feel like a lot on any given day. podcast on NPR.