President Donald Trump confirmed Saturday that both he and Elon Musk are going to Fort Knox to make sure there’s gold there.
Since the late 1930s, Fort Knox has housed a large portion of the United States’ official gold reserves and features significant security. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week that there is an audit every year and that “all the gold is present and accounted for.”
Trump said Saturday during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that “we’re also going to Fort Knox” and that he’s going with Musk.
“Would anybody like to join us? Because we want to see if the gold is still there,” he said.
“Wouldn’t that be terrible if we opened it up and there was no gold there?“ Trump also said. ”So we’re going to open those doors.”
The president also told the audience not to be surprised if the vaults were opened and nothing was there. In his speech, Trump did not provide a timeline for when he would visit the base.
“We’re going to take a look and if there’s 27 tons of gold, we’ll be very happy,” Trump told the CPAC audience. “I don’t know how the [expletive] we’re going to measure it, but that’s okay. We want to see lots of nice, beautiful, shiny gold in Fort Knox.”
“Don’t be totally surprised [if] we opened the door, we say, ‘There’s nothing here, they stole this too!’”
Last week, both the president and Musk, a senior adviser to Trump, said that he wants to check to see the situation with the Fort Knox gold reserves.
Fort Knox, a U.S. Army post, is about 35 miles south of Louisville and encompasses 109,000 acres in three Kentucky counties, including Bullitt, Hardin, and Mead. Camp Knox was established during World War I and became an artillery training center, according to the Army base’s website.
It was made a permanent installation in 1932 and has been known since then as Fort Knox. The first gold arrived at Fort Knox in 1937 with the 1st Cavalry Regiment called on to guard the shipment.
According to the U.S. Mint, current gold holdings at the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox are 147.3 million ounces. About half of the Treasury’s stored gold is kept at Fort Knox.
The U.S. Mint says only very small quantities have been removed to test the purity of the gold during regularly scheduled audits, and that except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the depository for many years. The gold’s book value is $42.22 per ounce.
Fort Knox’s official website says it’s been years since a significant quantity of gold has been withdrawn from the military base.
The recent comments on the highly fortified U.S. military base come as the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has gone from agency to agency in the federal government to cut fraud, waste, and abuse in order to save money.
