Ari Melber is taking Elon Musk to task for what the lawyer and journalist calls a gigantic conflict of interest.
Melber argued Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that Musk is using his access to President Donald Trump “to line his own pockets,” as the new Department of Government Efficiency that Musk is heading is curiously nicknamed DOGE — after a cryptocurrency Musk owns.
Melber suggested that this is “no different than trying to rename a government department after Coke or Tesla” if one had a financial stake in either, and noted that even the taxpayer-funded website for DOGE “promotes the same crypto coin” that Musk has long supported.
“So Day 1, Donald Trump’s chosen adviser, Elon Musk, is taking your taxpayer dollars and promoting his crypto business, stuff that he owns,” Melber said. “He owns some of that. And the product … has nothing to do with cutting government spending or anything related.”
“He’s not even pretending,” the MSNBC host continued Tuesday. “It’s just a blatant grift.”
The new department has stated aims of cutting unnecessary government spending, which would make Musk’s alleged grift of using taxpayer dollars to promote Dogecoin all the more suspicious — as he has personally been a big supporter of the cryptocurrency over the years.
The department’s government website is almost entirely blank, save for its apparent new logo — whose gold-encircled dollar sign bears a bit of a resemblance to Dogecoin, which was launched in 2013 as an admitted joke based on an internet meme.
Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo/Associated Press
Trump officially formed the department through an executive order Monday, immediately before his administration was sued by the American Federation of Government Employees union and watchdog groups Public Citizen and the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
The suit accuses DOGE of violating 1972’s Federal Advisory Committee Act, which aims to ensure public transparency about the decisions government advisory groups are making behind closed doors. It further accused Musk of having glaring conflicts of interest.
His SpaceX company has reportedly received billions of dollars in federal contracts, after all, prompting concern that Musk will simply use DOGE to recommend policies that will benefit him financially — at the taxpayer’s expense.
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