Trump Has Disturbing Response to DOGE’s Massive Overreach of Power

Donald Trump doesn’t care that Elon Musk and his nerd squad have access to the private information of millions of Americans.

During a press conference Friday, Trump was asked about the Department of Government Efficiency’s unfettered access to trillion-dollar payment systems such as the U.S. Treasury Department, as well as the personal information of millions of Americans, including their Social Security numbers, home addresses, and bank account numbers.

“Why does DOGE need all of that?” asked one reporter.

“Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily,” Trump admitted. “I mean, we don’t have very good security in our country, and they get it very easily.”

Trump appeared completely unbothered by the massive intrusion on the privacy of U.S. citizens—in fact, he seemed to suggest it was the fault of government agencies for not better concealing this information from Musk’s goons.

Trump rambled on, describing how DOGE needed to audit certain investments the government had made because they were “obscene, dangerous, bad, very costly.”

Concerns over DOGE’s “insider threat” have only grown in recent days, as they take over agency after agency, acquiring access to more troves of sensitive information. Trump has already said he couldn’t care less about Musk’s conflicts of interest, and the White House said that the DOGE czar would self-determine what projects were appropriate for him to work on.

As DOGE continues to extend its reach, members of Musk’s team are simultaneously being revealed to be a group of twenty-something failsons.

Musk announced Friday that he would be rehiring the DOGE employee who was fired over a range of racist posts because, as he wrote, “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Still, on X, Musk waged war against the journalist who reported on the posts in the first place, so it’s considerably more likely that, to him, there was nothing to forgive.

Additionally, Bloomberg reported Friday that another one of the 19-year-old wards on Musk’s DOGE team had been fired from an internship after he was accused of sharing company secrets with a competitor. Seems like the perfect person to have access to a trove of sensitive information, right?

Shocking: The 19-year old DOGE goon with a questionable résumé who goes by “big balls” online was fired from his last real gig for leaking company information online.

Bloomberg is reporting that Edward Coristine was fired from cybersecurity firm Path Network in 2022 for “leaking internal information to the competitors.” Now Coristine has access to the most sensitive internal information there is, the federal government’s, and he has no confirmed clearance that legitimizes that access.

“I can confirm that Edward Coristine’s brief contract was terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure,” a spokesperson for Path Network told Bloomberg on Thursday.

“I had access to every single machine,” Coristine wrote on Discord just weeks after being fired. But he swore he “never exploited it because it’s just not me.” He also posted that he had done “nothing contractually wrong” at Path Network. The comments were made in a Discord channel dedicated to one of Path’s competitor companies.

Several people who knew Coristine said they were confused as to how he ascended to such a consequential position and nervous as to how he’ll handle the enormous responsibility that comes with it, given that he could not handle it at Path Network.

This all comes as DOGE strikes an antagonistic chord with the federal government, taking over government buildings, telling federal employees to stop showing up to work, and locking out elected representatives.

“Your data has been breached. Donald Trump gave unvetted teenagers access to your most private information,” Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell wrote on X. “We are fighting now in the courts. And, shortly, Democrats will use our votes—in government funding bill—to stop this madness and secure your data.”

Musk, DOGE, and Coristine have yet to comment.

The Department of Energy on Friday tried to clarify why one of Elon Musk’s DOGE underlings was granted access to the department’s I.T. systems despite opposition from its general counsel and cybersecurity offices. 

CNN reports that Luke Farritor, 23, whose previous work experience consists of an internship at Musk’s company SpaceX was granted access by Energy Secretary Chris Wright Wednesday. The department’s legal counsel and chief information offices, which govern I.T. and cybersecurity, “said this is a bad idea,” according to a source who spoke with CNN, given that Farritor hadn’t received a standard background check. 

“He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems. None of those things have been done,” said the unnamed source. 

While Farrior was only granted access to basic I.T., including email and Microsoft 365, according to CNN’s sources, the report still rang alarm bells as the agency is in charge of the country’s nuclear arsenal, among other aspects of American energy policy and production.

In response to the uproar, Wright sought to discourage speculation that Farrior or anyone else associated with DOGE had access to U.S. nuclear secrets.  

“I’ve heard these rumors. They’re like seeing our nuclear secrets. None of that is true at all,” the energy secretary told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan Friday. 

But Trump administration officials haven’t been honest with the level of access given to Musk’s DOGE cronies. One of his young software engineers, Marko Elez, had administrator privileges with the country’s most vital payment systems governing trillions of dollars in disbursements, allowing critical code to be rewritten, despite Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claiming Elez only had “read-only” access. Elez resigned this week over racist social media posts (but already may be rehired). Meanwhile, a U.S. district court on Thursday limited DOGE’s privileges in government agencies.

Right now, DOGE’s activities are stretching, if not outright breaking, federal law over government functions and positions that are supposed to be governed by Congress. But the only bulwark against Musk and Trump’s overhauling of the federal government is the courts, as federal law enforcement is in the president’s crosshairs.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has decided to play ball with the Trump administration in efforts to stop the Russian invasion.

On Monday, Trump announced that if Zelenskiy wanted to keep getting U.S. military aid, Ukraine would have to fork over some precious rare minerals.

“We’re telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earth; we want what we put up to go in terms of a guarantee. We want a guarantee, we’re handing them money hand over fist, we’re giving them equipment, [the European Union is] not keeping up with us,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We have an ocean in between, they don’t. It’s more important for them than it is for us … so we’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things.”

On Friday, Zelenskiy agreed to Trump’s demands.

“If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” he said, according to Reuters. “The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump,” Zelenskiy continued, trying to explain that he actually wasn’t just giving Trump access to all the valuable rocks he wanted but instead was offering a joint agreement.

The majority of Ukraine’s mineral deposits—holding metals like titanium and uranium—are now in Russian-controlled territory, as Putin has gained more and more Ukrainian soil as the war has dragged on.

“We need to stop Putin and protect what we have: a very rich Dnipro region, central Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.

Trump and Zelenskiy are expected to talk sometime next week.

Donald Trump wants you to believe that he’s totally nonplussed by Time magazine’s February cover, which features Elon Musk—not the president—behind the Resolute Desk.

During a press conference Friday alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump tried to play it off as if he were totally unbothered by the cover, insinuating that he wasn’t aware that the popular American news magazine (which named him “Person of the Year” in December) was still around.

“Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that,” Trump said when asked for a reaction to the provocative cover, sparking laughter from the room.

But Trump’s cavalier attitude to the magazine’s focus belies the fact that he spent years pining for it to name him “Person of the Year.” In fact, Time’s decision to feature Steve Bannon on the cover in the early days of Trump’s first term effectively ended his romance with his top strategist.

Bannon was, much like Musk, at the epicenter of Trump’s universe at one point, serving as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist in the first year of his term. But the former host of The Apprentice abruptly fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

The pattern appears to be repeating with Musk. Reports emerged Friday that even Trump loyalists in and outside of the administration have found themselves suffering under the billionaire’s sudden seizure of the executive branch.

Last month, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles openly refuted Musk’s outsize influence on the administration, telling Axios that anyone who wants to be a “star” would have no place on her team.

“I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles said at the time. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”