-Elon Musk answered questions in the Oval Office on Tuesday to defend his government takeover after several judges intervened to slow him down. Oh, and Donald Trump was there, too. For more on this -- it's time for "A Closer Look.
" ♪♪ We've talked about this a lot, and we'll keep talking about it. Donald Trump said during the campaign that his top priority was bringing down grocery prices. He said it was the main reason he got elected, and he said prices would start coming down as soon as he took office.
-I won on groceries. It's a very simple word, groceries. And I won an election based on that, we're gonna bring those prices way down.
On day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. When I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one. -Okay, but he didn't specify day one of what.
-[As Trump] I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. When you see Timothée Chalamet carrying that torch down La Cienega. You'll know that eggs are finally affordable again.
And you know I do -- I do think it will be Chalamet with the torch. He's a big star. Two "Dunes" and a "Wonka," with another "Dune" on the way.
Three "Dunes. " That's a lot of "Dunes. " [Normal] Of course, Trump has not lowered grocery prices.
In fact, according to the latest numbers released today, inflation is up 3%, with the price of eggs up 15% over the past four weeks and a whopping 53% since last year. Trump has no plan to solve any of that, so now he's acting like he is just a helpless bystander. -I hear so much about the word groceries.
I used to use groceries a lot on the trail. A word -- it's like sort of an old fashioned word. Groceries.
But groceries is the word that's the most accurate word. And, uh, the price of groceries went through the roof. Bacon was levels like nobody's ever seen.
You take a look at eggs today. I mean, the eggs are double, triple, quadruple. They're going through the roof.
-Oh, man, you know he doesn't have a plan when he just starts riffing on the word "groceries. " [As Trump] Groceries, I use it a lot. Old fashioned word and accurate as well, you know.
And I do want to get to my plan for inflation. But first, let's break the word down a little bit more, you know. The root, of course, gross.
That refers to the foods no one wants to eat. Cottage cheese is a big one for me. Always looks like someone else ate it first.
[ Laughter ] [Normal] Obviously Trump doesn't have and has never had a plan to bring down prices. Republicans think you'll just forget about the cost of food and housing and focus on dumb bull (bleep) like this -- -Congressman Buddy Carter of Georgia just introduced a bill authorizing Trump to acquire Greenland and rename it "Red, White, and Blueland. " -Oh my God, these people get so upset when someone changes their pronoun, but they treat world maps like (bleeping) Etch A Sketches.
Red, White, and Blueland -- Red, White, and Blueland sounds like the (bleeped) ride you take at Six Flags when the line for the roller coaster is too long. You're just stuck on a slow moving boat while weird, apple-faced puppets sing a haunting song about patriotism. ♪ Red, White, and Blueland, His, hers, and you land ♪ [ Laughter ] And you're like, "Why did I take acid?
" [ Laughter ] And unfortunately, Trump's desire for territorial expansion doesn't end with Red, White, and Blueland. He keeps insisting on his plan to own Gaza and forcibly displace the Palestinians who live there, which is the literal definition of ethnic cleansing. The plan has shocked and outraged the international community to the point where even his own White House tried to disavow it and walk it back.
When Trump first floated the plan, it was so insane, his Chief of Staff -- [ Laughter ] made a horrified face like she just saw the price of eggs. [ Laughter ] But on Tuesday, during a meeting with the King of Jordan, Trump doubled down. -We'll, uh -- we're not gonna buy anything.
We're gonna have it and we're gonna keep it. -[As Trump] We're not gonna buy anything because sadly, we can't afford it due to the fact that this morning I had a two egg omelet. [ Laughter ] Does this mean we're just gonna invade and illegally occupy Gaza?
That would not only be morally grotesque and abhorrent, but also the exact kind of foreign entanglement Trump promised to keep us out of. As a reminder, this is the guy who said he would stop nation building abroad and slammed George W. Bush for getting us stuck in various military catastrophes in the Middle East.
-We're getting out of the nation building business. No more nation building. It's never going to work.
Why are we nation building over there? We want a nation built over here. We've tried the nation building -- doesn't work.
Not gonna work, never gonna work. -Man, we are building quite the collection of montages where Trump contradicts himself. When he sees how much of a hypocrite he's being, I think he's gonna feel pretty silly.
Unfortunately, though, we're running out of room, because we keep all the contradiction montages on VHS. I mean -- Oh, we got Trump on grocery prices. That's a good one.
And then we got -- oh, Trump on nation building. That's a good one. This one just says wedding vows.
That's, uh -- that's a fun one. That's a fun one. The point is not that Trump is a liar and hypocrite.
Everyone knows that, on both sides of the aisle. It's that right wing MAGA populism is a scam. When you hear Republicans claim they're against nation building and forever wars, just remember -- they're the ones who want to own and occupy Gaza, Greenland, Panama, and Canada.
Even George W. Bush would be like, "Red, White, and Blueland sounds dumb as (bleep). " [ Laughter ] "And I'm the guy who said nucular.
" [ Laughter ] And certainly the Democrats have not covered themselves in glory on this either. The establishment wings of both parties have plunged us into disastrous and unpopular forever wars. But at least Biden was the one who finally got us out of Afghanistan.
And, sure, as withdrawals go, it was not a good one. The US military left Afghanistan like someone just yelled, "My parents are coming home from Florida early! Everybody's gotta get out!
" But still, at least we were moving in the right direction, which was out. So now let's hear the man who declared an end to nation building explain his plan for Gaza. -We're gonna make sure that there's gonna be peace, and there's not gonna be any problem, and nobody's gonna question it.
And we're going to run it very properly. And eventually we'll have economic development at a very large scale, maybe the largest scale on that site. And we'll have lots of good things built there, including hotels and office buildings.
-So if you're keeping track at home, we still don't have a plan for lowering egg prices, but we do have a plan for building hotels in Gaza. Look, I'll tell you why I think this is happening. It's called the Gaza Strip, and the only other strip he knows is the Vegas Strip.
So he thinks that can work there. And if you think the people around him are going to say, "Actually, sir, it's a different kind of strip," just remember the people around him also suggest Red, White, and Blueland. This is what Trump does.
We've seen it for years. It's nothing new. He's hoping voters will pay attention to his plans for Gaza and Greenland, and ignore what he's doing to the rest of the government, because while Republicans are introducing bills to change the names of semi-autonomous foreign regions, Trump and the richest man alive are dismantling the government agencies that stop them from ripping you off.
-The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will no longer fight financial abuse. The newly installed acting director, Russell Vought, ordered employees in an email on Saturday to stop virtually all of their work. America's top consumer financial watchdog is meant to provide oversight over big banks, payday lenders, and other financial institutions that could be hurting citizens.
A source tells CNN that DOGE deleted the watchdog X's account. You can see here Elon Musk tweeted, "CFPB RIP" with a tombstone emoji. -All right, first of all, don't announce policy via emoji.
When Biden did student loan forgiveness, he didn't tweet -- "School emoji. Graduation Emoji. Money emoji.
Weed emoji. " Mostly because it would have taken a week to explain emojis to him, and then another week to get him to stop looking through the emojis. [As Biden] Hey, look at this.
They got a little lobster here. Oh, hey, they also got two different kinds of whales. [ Laughter ] How do you decide which whale you use?
[Normal] Second, think about how corrupt this is. They're eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that stops companies from ripping you off. It's so transparent.
Elon Musk is literally in the process right now of turning his social media site into a peer to peer payment and financial services app, and at the same time, he's single handedly dismantling the agency that oversees payments and financial services. So from now on, when a bank screws you with overdraft fees and you ask for your money back, the bank can just say -- -We're gonna have it and we're gonna keep it. -Now, on Tuesday, Musk appeared in the Oval Office to take questions next to an intern who didn't seem to be paying much attention.
I mean, come on, dude, you expect to get college credit for this? Musk was asked about his own personal conflicts of interest and how he would assure Americans they could trust him. -The White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have.
Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency? -We actually are trying to be as transparent as possible.
In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X. -Oh, cool, so to find out what our government is up to, we just have to wade through a sea of Nazis, trolls, ads for Cheech and Chong weed gummies, and bots with women in bikinis offering to send us 1 million units of something called "sex coin" as long as we send our Social security and bank routing numbers, which I did, and I am happy to say that I am now rolling in sex coin! Unfortunately, I tried to use it to buy eggs, and the sign at the grocery store says eggs now costs 3 million sex coin a dozen.
Musk was also asked to respond to criticism over his attempts to dismantle the federal government and slash everything from medical research to education funding, despite the fact that no one elected him. -You couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted, uh, you know, we have a majority of the public voting for President Trump.
We won the House. We won the Senate. The people voted for major government reform.
-No, they voted for lower grocery prices, according, you know, to your sleepy receptionist over there. Also, this is a small point, but Trump did not win a majority of the vote. In fact, a majority of people voted for someone else.
And I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but I'm holding on to whatever the (bleep) I can to stay sane. Otherwise my brain would be toast. I'd be off to La La Land, Cuckooland, and of course -- -Red, White, and Blueland.
-This been "A Closer Look. " ♪♪ ♪♪ -It's a face-off!
