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Final week throughout an interview on Air Drive One, a reporter requested Donald Trump whether or not Elon Musk was planning to chop the Pentagon’s price range when he is completed with the Nationwide Park Service and different departments. Trump responded that Musk will as an alternative be Fort Knox.
I am assuming there was a uncomfortably lengthy pause earlier than the reporter requested why. “To verify the gold is there,” Trump responded.
Whether or not the gold is definitely at Fort Knox is a query Musk had posed just a few days beforehand on this submit on X:
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This has led many to imagine that one thing occurred to the gold at Fort Knox. Nobody is aware of precisely what occurred, however one thing. These persons are (in all probability) flawed.
After all the gold continues to be at Fort Knox
The almost certainly (and boring) Fort Knox state of affairs: all 147.3 million ounces of U.S. gold are sitting there, ready so that you can dive in like Scrooge McDuck. All of the bars, half of the U.S. complete gold reserves, are secure in a closely guarded, secretive vault on a Kentucky navy set up, simply as they have been for the reason that Nineteen Forties. In response to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, there’s an audit of Fort Knox yearly and that “all of the gold is current and accounted for.”
“The one gold eliminated has been very small portions used to check the purity of gold throughout frequently scheduled audits. Aside from these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for a few years,” confirms the U.S. Mint.
However is not that precisely what the U.S. Mint would say? Perhaps somebody has been stealing all of the gold, or the federal government has been secretly promoting the individuals’s bullion for years! Yeah, in all probability not.
Conspiracy theories about Fort Knox
Musk and Trump usually are not saying something new—murmurs of “the gold just isn’t actually there” have been frequent amongst conspiracy theorists for the reason that Nineteen Forties, quickly after development was accomplished on The USA Bullion Depository and the gold was shipped from the coasts to the heartland to guard it from theoretical invaders.
Listed below are solely a few of the conspiracy theories about Fort Knox:
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1952: The Daughters of the American Revolution allege that the gold has been stolen from Fort Knox. President Truman invitations them to examine the vault however they do not want.
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1973: Dr. Peter Beter (his precise title) revealed The Conspiracy Towards the Greenback: The Spirit of the New Imperialism, a guide that contends “highly effective Individuals have secretly permitted $20 billion value of gold to be faraway from Ft. Knox. In response to Beter, they took it out via a secret tunnel within the vault.
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2009: On-line cranks assert that Fort Knox’s gold bars had been changed with tungsten-filled forgeries so the true gold might be offered by the Clinton administration.
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2010: Ron Paul questions whether or not there’s gold at Fort Knox.
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Unknown: There are aliens there.
These conspiracy theories spring from a bizarre mixture of financial coverage disagreements that date again to the 1800s, hucksters attempting to get individuals to put money into gold schemes, and the questions some individuals have about something secret that “the federal government does not need you to know.” Like all the pieces else, the web provides individuals time and area to unfold and modernize concepts, however the Trump/Musk quotes are simply warmed-over bullshit. And this is not even the golden age of Fort Knox conspiracy theories. That was in the course of the Nineteen Seventies, when concern about our nation’s gold was so pervasive, the Treasury Division had a short second of transparency.
That point the press was allowed into Fort Knox
It is not on many individuals’s cabinets in 2025, however Dr. Peter Beter’s (once more, actually his title) The Conspiracy Towards the Greenback was influential sufficient within the early Nineteen Seventies that tabloids picked up on his claims, and shortly members of Congress had been getting calls from constituents, calling for proof that the Fort Knox gold reserves had been nonetheless there. So in 1974, the Treasure Division sighed and stated, “fantastic,” then invited members of Congress and the press to go to Fort Knox to see for themselves. This was the primary time anybody apart from treasury staff had been allowed contained in the vault since a restricted audit was performed in 1953.
A handful of congresspeople and about 120 members of the media had been escorted behind 20-ton metal doorways and proven the gold bars. They picked them up. Weighed them. They even bought to see the key tunnel, an escape hatch that ends within the constructing, a failsafe for anybody by accident locked within the vault.
The press took footage and shot movie of all of it:
Even probably the most skeptical congresspeople who toured the vault principally concluded “seems to be just like the gold’s there,” and so, it appears, did most Individuals. However for diehard conspiracy theorists (and dummies) no quantity of proof is sufficient. Some derided the go to as a “present audit” that proved nothing, and others concocted “the bars are stuffed with tungsten” theories as a result of even when individuals noticed it and took footage, it is nonetheless not true.
Trump’s Treasury Secretary’s 2017 go to to Fort Knox
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just lately has stated he would organize an inspection for any senator who’s fascinated by seeing the vaults. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s first treasury secretary, had the same coverage. In 2017, Mnuchin, Mitch McConnell, and different officers visited Fort Knox to overview the bullion. Their go to included a viewing of the overall eclipse as an added bonus. What good timing.
Here is Mitch McConnell with gold bars. Lovely!
Credit score: US Treasury Division
Apparently you may signal your title once you go to Fort Knox, as Mnuchin does right here.
Credit score: US Treasury Division
The precise objective of Mnuchin and firm’s Fort Knox outing is not clear, however I am certain they had been conducting essential governmental enterprise, not simply sightseeing, and if they’d seen any lacking bars, they might have alerted the correct authorities.
Paperwork, crowns, and plenty of narcotics: unusual issues saved at Fort Knox
Whereas the gold appears to be there, alien our bodies are (in all probability) not saved at Fort Knox, however that does not imply we do not put bizarre issues down there typically.
Again within the Nineteen Forties, with World Battle II ravaging Europe, the U.S. authorities moved the signed unique Structure of the USA, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Tackle, and drafts of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Tackle into the vault for safe-keeping. The vault was used to retailer the Crown of St. Stephen, till we despatched it again to Hungary in 1978.
Till just lately, Fort Knox was house to the U.S.’s strategic reserves of pain-killers: At one time, 68,269 kilos of opium and morphine had been saved within the vault—that is a lot of narcotics! It is not saved there any longer, and the place it went just isn’t public. Why do not you look into that, Elon Musk?
Nonetheless within the vault are ten 1933 Double Eagle gold cash, a 1974-D aluminum cent, and twelve gold (22-karat) Sacagawea greenback cash that flew on the House Shuttle Columbia in 1999.
Does the gold in Fort Knox even matter?
It is cool that we’ve an ideal large Smaug-sized treasure trove within the U.S., however does it do us any good? The gold bars saved in Fort Knox have been gathering mud for the reason that early Nineteen Forties, and we do not do something with them and so they do not have an effect on something tangible. Our cash hasn’t been immediately tied to gold for the reason that Thirties (or Nineteen Seventies; it is sophisticated) so in a way it does not matter whether or not all of the bars are stuffed with tungsten. The piles of gold serve primarily as a symbolic illustration of our nation’s wealth and stability—gold may be very shiny, in spite of everything. Take into account this: Fort Knox’s gold is value $435 billion, complete. The U.S. nation debt is $36.22 trillion. So even when we had been to promote all of it tomorrow, it will be a drop within the bucket. Just like the money hidden underneath the nation’s blanket, Fort Knox gold is our “if issues get actually unhealthy, we nonetheless have this.” It is the cash within the banana stand. If Elon Musk opens the vault doorways and does discover nothing there, I hope he is sensible sufficient to maintain it to himself.
