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The Other Critical Name That Wasn’t at Musk’s Big DOGE Interview

The person the White House says is the department’s acting administrator wasn’t present.

Elon Musk, flanked by some of his lieutenants in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), sat down with Fox News host Bret Baier for an interview Thursday, yet did so without the woman who the White House says is the interim leader of DOGE. Amy Gleason, a former official in the U.S. Digital Service before it was rebranded to DOGE, is the “acting administrator” of the department, the Trump administration said last month. That announcement came after a White House aide had claimed in a court filing that Musk, despite his and Trump’s comments suggesting he was leading DOGE, did not have “actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” Gleason, according to The New York Times, hadn’t been aware that the White House would be presenting her as the face of DOGE, and was on a previously scheduled vacation in Mexico when her identity became known. In any event, neither Gleason, a former health care executive, nor the several young men who have drawn attention for their efforts to slash and burn federal government departments and agencies were part of the Fox interview.