Elon Musk at the White House: FULL NEWS CONFERENCE

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk came together in the White House on Tuesday for Trump to sign an executive order concerning the billionaire’s work leading the Department of Government Efficiency andwanting federal agencies to work with him. The Associated Press reviewed a White House fact sheet on the order, which is intended to advance Musk’s work slashing spending with his Department of Government Efficiency. Musk made his first public comments about his work overseeing DOGE. Trump put Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency to help eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in spending and trim the more than 2 million-person federal workforce. Musk said there are some good people in the federal bureaucracy, but that they need to be accountable. He called the bureaucracy an "unelected" fourth branch of government and said the budget deficit must be addressed. He also said he wants to add "common-sense controls" to the federal spending adding taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely and that to cut the waste is not "draconian." "Transparency is what builds trust," he said. He also pushed back against critics who have accused him of mounting a hostile takeover of the government. "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." "We're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse," Trump added. "We have a case in New York where a hotel is paid $59 million…because it's housing migrants, illegal migrants are all illegal, I believe," Trump added. However, according to the New York Times, the "the federal money had been properly allocated by FEMA under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year, adding that it was not a disaster relief grant and had not been spent on luxury hotels."