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President Donald Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One Wednesday night that his administration would take a hard look at Fort Knox to determine whether the gold depository was fully intact.
“We’re going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there,” he said. “…We hope everything’s fine with Fort Knox, but we’re going to go to Fort Knox…if the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset.”
Shortly after the president’s comments surfaced online, DOGE masthead Elon Musk commented on X, “A livestream of Fort Knox would be [fire emojis].”
What’s the big deal with the gold at Fort Knox? According to Axios, the famed depository houses over half of the gold reserves of the U.S. Treasury, which reportedly amounts to around 147 million troy ounces of gold.
The facility has long been known to be highly secretive, and amid DOGE’s stunning revelations of waste and abuse within federal agencies, it seems logical that Americans would be curious to know what’s going on behind closed doors.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg that “all the gold is there” this week, and said he didn’t have any plans to visit Kentucky to check. “There was a report September 30, 2024, all the gold is there – any U.S. senator who wants to come and visit it, can arrange and visit it through our office,” he said.
When asked whether he would consider revaluing the U.S. gold reserves during the same interview, he declined to commit to such a move.
Interest in the gold situation at Fort Knox sparked anew when Musk commented on an X post in February from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who claimed he had never been able to gain entry to Fort Knox while serving as senator.
Musk wrote, “Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Fort Knox? Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. That gold is owned by the American public! We want to know if it’s still there.”