Three weeks into this administration, hardly a day seems to go by that does not produce a norm-busting moment at the White House. But the scene that played out in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon was among the wildest yet.

本届政府执政三周以来，白宫几乎每天都会出现打破常规的时刻。但周二下午在椭圆形办公室上演的一幕，却是迄今为止最疯狂的场景之一。

President Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk while Elon Musk stood at his side and attempted to explain, for the first time in public since Inauguration Day, what it is he came to Washington to do.

特朗普总统坐在坚毅桌后面，埃隆·马斯克站在他身边，自就职日以来首次公开解释他来华盛顿到底是要做什么。

For weeks, he and his Dorito-dusted minions have burrowed deep inside the federal government, tearing the thing apart from within by sending workers packing and shutting down programs and entire agencies, testing if not exceeding the bounds of the law and the Constitution in the process.

几周以来，马斯克和玉米片不离手的下属们深入联邦政府内部，解雇员工、关闭项目乃至整个机构，从内部把政府搞得四分五裂，在此过程中不断试探甚至可能超出了法律和宪法的界限。

So far, the only explanations to be had about what they are doing or where they are going next have come in the form of brief or sometimes trolling messages on the social media platform Mr. Musk owns or in opaque statements from administration officials.

到目前为止，关于他们在做什么或下一步要怎样，仅有的一些解释都来自马斯克拥有的社交媒体平台上简短或时而带有煽动性的信息，抑或政府官员的不透明声明。

Dressed all in black, with a dark MAGA hat on his head and his young son fidgeting by his side or on his shoulders, Mr. Musk, seeming quite jolly about finding himself at the very pinnacle of power, sought on Tuesday to justify pushing tens of thousands of federal employees out the door by casting them as a collection of unelected and unaccountable managers of a wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy.

马斯克一身黑衣，头上戴着一顶深色的MAGA帽子，年幼的儿子时而在他身边，时而在他肩头，不安分地动来动去。置身权力顶峰，马克斯似乎非常高兴。周二，他试图为自己驱逐数万名联邦雇员的行为辩护，称他们不经选举产生、不负责任，管理着浪费腐败的官僚机构。

Workers overseeing contracts were mysteriously getting rich, he asserted without any backing details or evidence. Social Security was paying benefits to 150-year-olds. Taxpayers were being gouged.

他在没有任何细节或证据支持的情况下断言，监督合同的工作人员正在神秘地发财。社会保障向150岁的老人支付福利。纳税人被欺骗了。

Mr. Trump crossed his arms and listened while the mogul he’d turned loose told what he’d discovered.

特朗普交叉着双臂，听着这位被他放出去放手做事的大亨讲述自己的发现。

“If the bureaucracy is in charge,” said Mr. Musk, “then what meaning does democracy actually have?”

“如果官僚机构说了算，”马斯克说，“那么民主到底还有什么意义？”

He told tales of a “racket” being perpetrated by an army of bureaucrats, some “corrupt,” others merely “incompetent.” He talked about sketchy payments he’d found and “a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building,” and generally gave the impression that he had turned over a rock to find all sorts of old, rotten things squirming beneath it.

他讲述了一群官僚的“勾当”，其中一些是“腐败”，另一些只是“无能”。他谈到他发现的可疑付款，以及“大量空白支票从大楼里飞出来”，给人的总体感觉是，他翻开一块石头，发现下面蠕动着各种陈旧、腐烂的东西。

“The fraudsters complain the loudest,” he said about the outrage he has created, as Mr. Trump nodded appreciatively.

“骗子的抱怨声是最大的，”他在谈到自己引发的愤怒时说，特朗普在一边满意地点了点头。

Mr. Musk asserted that he had the right to meddle because “the people voted for major government reform” and “that’s what the people are going to get.”

马斯克声称，他有权干预，因为“人民投票要求重大的政府改革”，“这就是人民将会得到的”。

The world’s richest man waved off any suggestion that he stands to benefit from the dismantling of the regulatory agencies leading investigations and lawsuits against his companies. His mandate to audit the Pentagon’s spending is not a conflict of interest even though he has billions of dollars in military contracts, he maintained, because he always provides the best value to the government, and anyway, those contracts are not with him but with his companies.

这位世界首富否认了他将从拆解针对其公司的调查和诉讼的监管机构中获益的说法。他坚称，尽管自己手头拥有数十亿美元的军事合同，但他审计五角大楼开支的任务并不存在利益冲突，因为他总是为政府提供最大价值，而且，无论如何，这些合同不是与他个人签订的，而是与他的公司签订的。

He called himself “maximally transparent,” even though this was his first time taking questions from the news media since his slash-and-burn campaign commenced and the White House is not releasing his financial disclosure statement.

他称自己“最大程度的透明”，尽管这是他自激进的竞选活动开始以来，第一次接受新闻媒体的提问，白宫也没有公布他的财务披露声明。

But also in the air was this fact: Mr. Trump has generally healthy job approval numbers, suggesting that many Americans are so far supportive or at least open-minded about what Mr. Musk has been empowered to do. Taxpayers have always typically had strong suspicions about how their money is used — a reality Mr. Trump made sure to mention. “The public gets it,” he emphasized at one point.

但还有一个事实也在流传：特朗普的工作支持率总体上不错，这表明到目前为止，许多美国人对马斯克被授权所做的事情持支持态度，或者至少持开放态度。纳税人通常对他们的钱被如何被使用抱有强烈怀疑——特朗普肯定会提到这一点。“公众明白这一点，”他一度强调。

Occasionally, the president would chime in to echo Mr. Musk about the corruption of various unnamed bureaucrats or to otherwise offer vague pronouncements supporting his theory of the case. But for roughly half an hour, he did something highly unusual for Donald J. Trump: He largely ceded the floor.

偶尔，总统也会插话，附和马斯克对各种未公开姓名的官员腐败的看法，或者发表一些模糊的声明，支持马斯克的观点。但在大约半个小时的时间里，他做了一件对自己来说极不寻常的事情：他基本上放弃了发言。

It was an interesting moment for the president to summon his buddy into the Oval Office before the cameras.

总统把他的朋友叫进椭圆形办公室面对镜头，这是一个有趣的时刻。

Just four days earlier, Mr. Trump was asked whether he had any reaction to a new cover of Time magazine depicting Mr. Musk sitting behind the Resolute Desk. “No,” Mr. Trump had answered, before cracking: “Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that.” (Unlikely, considering the magazine put him on the cover of its “Person of the Year” issue in December, copies of which are displayed on a rack hanging on the wall of the press office down the hall.)

就在四天前，特朗普被问起，他对《时代》杂志新一期封面上，马斯克坐在坚毅桌后面的画面有何感想。“没有什么想法，”特朗普回答说，然后突然问道：“《时代》杂志还在吗？我都不知道。”（这不太可能，因为《时代》杂志去年12月把他放在“年度人物”特刊封面上，大厅尽头新闻办公室墙上的架子上就摆着几本。）

Now a revised version of the cover had been willed into existence, with Mr. Trump firmly planted in the chair and Mr. Musk playing the supporting role at his side.

现在，一个修订版的封面诞生了，特朗普稳坐在椅子上，马斯克在他身边扮演配角。

Mr. Trump tolerated the presence of Mr. Musk’s (mostly well behaved) toddler and laughed at Mr. Musk’s jokes. They presented a unified front and cast themselves as two white knights taking on a whole city of time servers. Mr. Musk pretty much admitted that he was taking the same approach to the government as he does to his companies — cut first, ask questions later. “We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes,” he said, “but we will also fix the mistakes very quickly.”

特朗普容忍马斯克蹒跚学步的幼子在场（他基本上表现乖巧），并对马斯克的笑话报以笑声。他们呈现出统一战线，把自己塑造成两个白衣骑士，要挑战大群混日子的官僚。马斯克几乎承认，他对待政府的方式和对待自己的公司是一样的——先裁员，再提问。“我们行动很快，所以我们会犯错误，”他说，“但我们也会很快纠正错误。”

He said that his team had restarted funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development for H.I.V. prevention plans, for example. And at one point he acknowledged that some of the eye-popping claims made about government spending were not quite right, such as an assertion that the government spent $50 million on condoms for people living in Gaza.

例如，他说他的团队已经重新启动了美国国际开发署为预防艾滋病毒计划提供的资金。他还一度承认，有关政府开支的一些惊人说法并不完全正确，比如政府花了5000万美元为加沙地带的人购买避孕套。

“Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect,” he said, “and should be corrected.”

“嗯，首先，我说的一些事情可能是错的，”他说，“应该加以纠正。”

And, apparently, still repeated if modified. Mr. Trump listened closely as Mr. Musk then suggested that the United States should not be spending as much as it does on family planning around the world, saying, “I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere.” He added, “That’s really an enormous amount of condoms, if you think about it.”

而且，很显然，就算经过修正，也依然会被重复。特朗普仔细听着，马斯克接着暗示，美国不应该在世界各地的计划生育方面花费那么多，他说，“我不确定我们是否应该把价值5000万美元的避孕套送到任何地方。”他补充说，“仔细想想，这可真是海量的避孕套啊。”

Mr. Trump began to laugh.

特朗普大笑起来。