Now that he’s successfully renamed the Gulf of Mexico and bullied anyone who won’t accept the Gulf of America, Donald Trump has a new obsession that’s ripped straight from right-wing social media: making sure the gold in Fort Knox is still there.
If you are not a close follower of Elon Musk’s X replies, or of libertarians preoccupied with investing in gold and crypto, you may be confused about why President Trump announced on Monday that he’s going to investigate a potential Fort Knox gold heist.
Trump said on Monday, as French president Emmanuel Macron chuckled in the background, “We’re actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there. Because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold.”
The state of the U.S. government’s gold reserve at Fort Knox has been the focus of conspiracy theories for decades. The highly secure Kentucky military base stores 147.3 million ounces, which is currently worth around $433.7 billion, according to the U.S. Mint. The U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, but if Fort Knox has less gold than the government says — or none at all — it could roil gold markets, aside from being a massive scandal.
So why has this suddenly become a top concern for the Trump administration? Apparently because ZeroHedge tweeted at Elon Musk. On February 15, the DOGE chief had this exchange with the conspiracy-minded financial news site on X:
Over the next few days, Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee — longtime Fort Knox gold skeptics — urged DOGE to do an audit. Musk said the American people want to know if the gold is “stolen” or “still there,” and replied to an Alex Jones post, “It would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox!”
Since the first gold shipment arrived at Fort Knox in 1937, federal officials have checked on it several times, most recently during the first Trump administration. Per Forbes:
The Fort Knox depository has only opened its doors to non-authorized personnel on three occasions: In 1943 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1974 for 10 Congress members to break down “cobwebs” to “re-assur[e] the public that their gold is intact and safe” and in 2017 for a delegation including Sen. Mitch McConnell, R. Ky., and then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “It is freakishly well secured,” then-Gov. Matt Bevin, R. Ky., said after visiting the Fort Knox depository in 2017. “The gold is safe,” Bevin added.
And last week, Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told iHeart Radio host Dan O’Donnell that the department audits Fort Knox every year, and that “all the gold is present and accounted for.” He added that senators are welcome to come see for themselves.
But it seems Trump doesn’t trust his own Treasury secretary on the matter. He has brought up Musk’s Fort Knox audit, unprompted, several times in the past week. On February 19, Trump kept steering the conversation back to gold as he took questions from reporters on Air Force One.
“We hope everything’s fine with Fort Knox, but we’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there,” he said. “If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset.”
A day later, Trump told Republican governors that he will join Musk on his as-yet-unscheduled visit to Fort Knox.
“I’m actually going on this one. All my life I’ve heard about Fort Knox. That’s where the gold is kept,” Trump said at a reception in Washington, per The Hill.
“We’re getting a little bit shaky. We’re getting the yips on this stuff. Like, I want to find out,” Trump continued. “We’re going to open up the doors. I’m going to see if we have gold there. Did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox?”
So why is Trump taking time out of his busy schedule to personally investigate the contents of Fort Knox? The likeliest explanation is that he’s just fulfilling a boyish fantasy, like when he played with big trucks and became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. Who wouldn’t want to tour the “fabled Fort Knox”?
But Trump’s fixation on the idea that “maybe somebody stole the gold” is a bit suspicious. The president has a habit of accusing other people of things he’s guilty of himself and a well-known fondness for all things gold. Perhaps he isn’t the most trustworthy detective to put on the case.
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