Turtles All The Way Down 🐢

Everything new is old again.

For security reasons, visitors are not allowed inside the depository grounds. There have been only three reported occasions when guests outside the Treasury Department have made inspection tours of the vault. The first was by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943. A second inspection was made by members of the United States Congress and the news media on September 23, 1974, led by the Director of the United States Mint, Mary Brooks. The tour was in response to a conspiracy theory, circulated by Peter Beter, that elites had secretly removed the gold in the depository and that the vaults were empty. The third inspection tour was on August 21, 2017, when Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell visited with a small group of officials and staff, including Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. According to a tweet by Mnuchin, and an internal email by Chief of the U.S. Mint Police Dennis O'Connor, he was the first Treasury Secretary to visit the depository since John Wesley Snyder in 1948.

Despite the bland assurance of history, I’m betting that “assurance” in 1974 went down about as well as it did this time:

Rand Paul told Fox he would like to “audit” the gold in Ft Knox: “I've been trying to go down and see the gold and make sure it's all there for about 10 years. During the first Trump admin, I got permission. You have to get permission all the way up to the Sec of Treasury. And then he said, ‘well, I want to go down there, too. I want to go down there when the eclipse is coming through KY, too, so I can see the eclipse and the gold at the same time.’ But they came when I wasn't there, so I didn't get to go down, but the Sec of the Treasury and McConnell did go down and attest that they believe they saw the gold down there.”

Except the conspiracy cranks weren’t in the White House in 1974.

McConnell and the SOT “believe” they saw the gold. But Rand Paul doesn’t believe they did, until he sees it. And then why do we believe what Rand Paul says?

… This, of course, got the right-wing conspiracy theorists cranked up into high gear. Elon Musk: “Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Ft. 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. It would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox!”

And then we can do a video walkthrough of the “bunker” under the White House!  And then livestream a “Day in the Life” of employees at the Pantex plant! Or, you know, just let DOGE release everyone’s Social Security number, so we can decide who’s on the rolls properly!

I honestly expect Trump to authorize the Fort Knox walkthrough. Until somebody tells him what a very, very, VERY bad idea that is.