Much to the dismay of her counterparts on Fox, Jessica Tarlov took a whack at Musk for all his talk about transparency while targeting government agencies that are leading investigations and conducting oversight of Musk's businesses.
February 13, 2025

Much to the dismay of her counterparts on Fox, Jessica Tarlov took a whack at Musk for all his talk about transparency while targeting government agencies that are leading investigations and conducting oversight of Musk's businesses.

Tarlov made an appearance on this Wednesday's The Story With Martha MacCallum, and after a lot of nonsense from her fellow guest Rich Lowry about how Trump supposedly has a "mandate" for all this stuff that he did not run on, and denied knowing about since most of it is straight from the Project 2025 playbook, Tarlov hit Musk hard for not opening up his own books.

MACCALLUM: So this was never a secret, Jessica. I mean, all along the way during the campaign, President Trump talked about, then candidate Trump, Elon Musk is going to come in.

I think when they had discussions early on, Musk was like, this is what I want to do. I do this at my companies all the time. There is so much waste. Let me at it. And he said, yes, but it was no secret that this was going to happen.

TARLOV: No, absolutely not. And some people were caught flat-footed on it. A lot of people have been, you know, feeling pretty left adrift, let's say, by Democratic leadership in terms of the messaging about this.

I'm not interested in pillorying Elon Musk. I have tremendous respect for him and liberals, we used to love him, right? We're driving around in our Teslas, though the stock price is not doing so well lately.

But the real issue here is that he's talking a big game about transparency, but he's not being transparent himself.

This idea that Elon Musk shouldn't have to do financial disclosures like everybody else who's working in the government is ludicrous.

MACCALLUM: But The New York Times web site...

TARLOV: No. They're not. Also when you pull it up, it's empty right now and President Trump said yesterday, "Oh well, he doesn't need to do it." Karoline Levitt has said we don't, he doesn't need to do it.

The New York Times is reporting that at least 11 of the federal agencies that they have gone after have opened complaints, over 32 opened complaints, into Musk's businesses.

Don't the American people deserve to know? He has tens of billions of dollars in government contracts.

If you are the DOGE master, then open up your own books. That's part of the federal government. They are spending money on Elon Musk and all of his technology.

Lowry again tried to pretend that Musk is somehow doing the will of the people because he's taking orders from Trump, which was followed by MacCallum basically excusing Trump and Musk just taking a wrecking ball to these government agencies while trying to downplay the conflicts.

MACCALLUM: Yes, I mean there is information on the website. I looked at a number of things on there this morning, and you know I think you're right, Jessica, that you do have to be very transparent about what we're doing here.

I just think that in some cases you have to scrap and you have to start from scratch.

TARLOV: But there is...

MACCALLUM: There is a valuable expenditure of money. What is, you know, I mean, President Carter started the Department of Education. President Trump can end it.

It was a presidential edict that developed that agency. It has failed miserably and a president can dissolve it.

TARLOV: I have a child that is going to be heading into kindergarten. We are touring our local public schools.

I'm thinking about all of these issues, but when you're saying that it hasn't been done before, the Clinton administration did it.

They had the National Performance Review. It was headed up by Al Gore, who was elected. They cut over 400,000 government regulations and agencies, and they went agency by agency and made smart decisions. That's the way that you do this.

This money was appropriated by Congress. That three branches of government...

MACCALLUM: Which has a responsibility to watch our tax dollars, and if there is waste and abuse and fraud. Today they testified that 20 percent of government expenditures are waste and fraud.

20 percent a corporation has a 3 percent top threshold of waste and fraud, so we need to, you know, we're have to break a few eggs in the process.

I'd love to know where she's getting those numbers. I'm guessing out of Elon's backside and none of it includes him.

Here's more on that report from The New York Times on Musk:

Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man who has been given enormous power by the president, have been dismantling federal agencies across the government. Mr. Trump has fired top officials and pushed out career employees. Many of them were leading investigations, enforcement matters or lawsuits pending against Mr. Musk’s companies.

Mr. Musk has also reaped the benefit of resignations by Biden-era regulators that flipped control of major regulatory agencies, leaving more sympathetic Republican appointees overseeing those lawsuits.

At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.

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The events of the past few weeks have thrown into question the progress and outcomes of many of those pending investigations into his companies.

The inquiries include the Federal Aviation Administration’s fines of Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, for safety violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit pressing Mr. Musk to pay the federal government perhaps as much as $150 million, accusing him of having violated federal securities law.

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