Elon Musk’s son stole the show at a White House press conference by picking his nose and sticking his fingers in his father’s ears. The billionaire owner of X and Trump’s most powerful adviser made a rare public appearance at the White House on Tuesday to defend the swift and extensive cuts he's pushing across the federal government while acknowledging there have been mistakes and will be more.
Musk stood next to the Resolute Desk with his young son as Trump praised his work with his Department of Government Efficiency, saying they've found "shocking" evidence of wasteful spending. But while Musk answered questions from the press his son X Æ A-Xii pulled faces, clinged onto his dad’s shoulders and interrupted him. At one stage he was filmed picking his nose as he stood at the edge of the famous Resolute Desk, which was gifted to President Rutherford Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1880.
The four-year-old, who is the son of Musk and the singer Grimes, also stuck his fingers in his dad’s ears as he took questions from the press. At another moment he appeared to copy his father’s hand gestures as they stood side by side. Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order to expand Musk's influence and continue downsizing the federal workforce. Despite concerns that he's amassing unaccountable power with little transparency, Musk described himself as an open book as he took questions from reporters for the first time since joining the Trump administration as a special government employee.
He joked that the scrutiny over his sprawling influence over federal agencies was like a "daily proctology exam.". He also claimed that DOGE's work was being shared on its website and on X. However, the DOGE website has no information, and the postings on X often lack many details, including which programs are being cut and where the organisation has access. The White House has also been moving to limit independent oversight. The inspector general for the US Agency for International Development was fired a day after warning that it had become nearly impossible to monitor $8.2 billion in humanitarian funds after DOGE began dismantling the agency.
Musk defended DOGE's work as "common sense" and "not draconian or radical.". "The people voted for major government reform, and that's what the people are going to get," he said. "That's what democracy is all about.". Musk acknowledged, in response to a question about false statements that the US was spending $50 million on condoms for Gaza, that some of the claims he's made about government programs have been wrong.
"Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody can bat 1,000," he said. He promised that he would act quickly to correct errors, and acknowledged that DOGE could be making errors as well. "We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly," Musk said. He said there are some good people in the federal bureaucracy, but they need to be accountable. Musk described the workforce as an "unelected" fourth branch that had "more power than any elected representative.".
