President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday that he supports Elon Musk's sweeping authority to slash federal funding by deploying staffers, some of whom some media reported were in their early 20s and whom Trump described as "smart people."
"I haven't met them yet, they actually work outside the White House, and they are smart people, not like the people who work in the control tower. We need smart people in the control tower, and we should put some of them in the control tower. The people we put in the control tower before are actually mentally deficient," Trump said, apparently referring to the collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet near Washington National Airport last week.
In the hours after Thursday's crash, Trump claimed without evidence that the FAA's diversity program was responsible for lowering standards for air traffic controllers, which in part led to the crash.
Despite Trump's claims, air traffic controller policies and standards have not become stricter during his administration than they were during the administrations of his two Democratic predecessors.
According to reports, Elon Musk, as a special government employee, has an office on the White House campus but does not receive a government salary. He brought with him a small group of associates who had been given full access to the Treasury's payment system. They have also threatened to shut down USAID, offered a "buyout" program to all federal employees and pushed career civil servants aside at multiple agencies, in some cases locking them out of their offices or computers.
In an earlier exchange, Trump said Musk had done a "great job" so far in controlling spending.