Trump and Musk show good rapport in an interview on Fox

WashingtonA week after their joint appearance from the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, have once again shown the strength of their alliance. Amid praise from Fox journalist Sean Hannity, Trump praised his partner – "I haven't found anyone smarter than him," he said – and made it clear that his plan is to make "cuts of hundreds of millions."

"One day Elon called me," Trump recalled, "and said: 'Have you seen them trying to break us up? ' And I said: 'Absolutely. ' They want to present it as if it were news that hit the headlines; President Musk He's involved in my cabinet affairs. But they can't do it. I used to think that [the media that criticizes him] was good, but it's not, because otherwise they would have made me not be president. But you know what I've learned, Elon? That people are smart. They get it. They understand what we're doing."

The joint interview is once again a message of total support from Trump to the chaos that Musk has unleashed in the US administration with his cuts. The dismantling of agencies such as USAID remains in the spotlight due to the dubious legality of the actions led by Musk at the head of the DOGE task force. Trump has made it clear, precisely, that what he likes most about his right-hand man is that he executes what he is told to do. "The team we have is really incredible, but these executive orders are signed by me and they are passed on to him and his group and other people, and they are all being carried out, we are complying with them," the Republican said.

Although Trump has wanted to reinforce confidence in his partner's actions and the supposed "transparency" that he defended last week, on Monday the White House stated in a court document that Musk is not the official administrator of DOGE - as had been implied - but is an employee of the White House itself. The revelation has created even more confusion around the task force that Musk supposedly leads, as Trump announced at the time. The issue was not referenced in the interview because it was filed before Monday.

Both Trump and Musk have again insisted that there are no conflicts of interest. Last Tuesday they argued this by highlighting DOGE's supposed "transparency" and now Musk has said in the Fox interview that he will step away from the process if there is a conflict of interest. At his side, Trump insisted on the idea: "If there was a conflict, you wouldn't be involved. We don't want that, right?" However, the reality is that most of the departments and agencies that DOGE has already passed through had open investigations into the billionaire's companies.

In the interview, Hannity asks if anyone at DOGE gets paid, to which Musk replies: "Well, actually some people are federal employees. It's fair to say that software engineers at DOGE could be making millions of dollars a year instead of making just a small fraction as federal employees." But it is not entirely clear who these employees are, as there has not been much information about their hiring. It is only known that a good number of them had worked for Musk's companies.

Delegitimizing the judiciary

The courts have become the main line of defense against the continuous trickle of executive orders with which Trump tries to overreach his executive power. In early February, Vice President JD Vance already questioned some of the emergency blocks against the suspension of federal workers orchestrated by Musk and Trump. Musk himself at the time called for "removing" some of the judges who had issued the order. Now the campaign launched by the Trump administration to erode judicial legitimacy and be able to increase the power of the executive has escalated another notch.

"If the will of the president is not implemented, and the president is the representative of the people, this means that the will of the people is not being carried out, and that means that we do not live in a democracy, but in a bureaucracy. So I think what we are seeing here is, in a sense, the churning of bureaucracy, so we do not go through it." "Musk told Hannity, while Trump kept smiling.

In his argument, the billionaire has ignored the fact that there is also a Congress, made up of representatives also elected at the polls, whose powers the president is trying to transfer by means of decrees. The best-known example is the dismantling of USAID via executive order, although the international cooperation agency was established by Congress and its funding depends on budgets approved by legislators. The courts have begun to block executive actions when Trump has tried to exceed the functions of the executive, to clarify whether the Constitution really grants that power to the president. Musk has also ignored the fact that he is not an elected official either.