Watertown NY By Hans Wilder
So here we go—February 20, 2025—President Trump, in his infinite wisdom, declares he’s gonna audit Fort Knox’s gold reserves. “We’re going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there,” he says, according to CNBC. The “fabled” Fort Knox—like it’s some magical land where leprechauns guard America’s fiscal sanity. You half expect him to follow it up with, “And if we find a dragon, we’ll audit his ass too.”
Of course, the spark for this latest sideshow came from Elon Musk, who, in between launching rockets and rebranding Twitter as X (because, y’know, words are overrated), started wondering aloud if the gold’s still there. He proposed a live video walkthrough. Sure, why not? We’ll stream the collapse of public trust live, with commentary from Alex Jones and background music by Yoko Ono.
Musk is part of the Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE, because why not turn government into a meme? These guys want to “cut waste,” but considering Musk’s history of “efficiency” (just ask a former Twitter employee), we might end up with Fort Knox on Airbnb by the end of the week. It’s no coincidence that Senator Rand Paul’s been barking up this tree for a decade, too. Transparency, they say. Well, if the government were any more transparent, we’d see right through the lies—and straight into the void.
The Vault of Secrets (Or Just an Empty Vault?)
Fort Knox, the legendary vault of American wealth, has been sitting there since 1937, supposedly cradling 147.3 million troy ounces of gold. That’s around $433.7 billion, according to the U.S. Mint—Axios did the math, bless their souls. This place is like the financial equivalent of the Holy Grail, only less believable. The vault’s opened to unauthorized eyes just three times: in 1943 for FDR, in 1974 for Congress, and in 2017 for Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin, by the way, is the guy you send when you want to make sure no one feels reassured.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent piped up recently, probably after being shaken awake by a PR intern, to assure us that “annual audits are conducted, and all the gold is present and accounted for,” as reported by Business Insider. But let’s talk about those audits, shall we? The last time the public got a good look at the gold was in 1974. Yeah, half a century ago. Since then, we’ve had more Bigfoot sightings than glimpses of America’s gold reserves.
Conspiracy theories? Oh, you bet. Some folks think the gold was sold off, melted down, or maybe just swapped for bricks of lead. And Musk, ever the showman, fans the flames with a South Park meme: “And it’s gone.” Ha-ha. Real funny. Nothing like meme-ifying the potential heist of the century.
The Bottom Line
The truth is, whether there’s gold in Fort Knox or not doesn’t matter. The real gold is in keeping people distracted. While we’re all staring at the vault, arguing over audits, they’re probably out back, selling the damn fort to Disney. Hell, next year, we’ll be paying $100 a ticket to ride the “Gold Rush” roller coaster at Fort Knox World—brought to you by DOGE.
The audit’s just a show, a shiny object to wave in front of a nation that’s addicted to spectacle. They’ve mastered the art of keeping us entertained while the real heist happens right under our noses. And when the dust settles, whether the gold’s there or not, we’ll be left holding nothing but our X feeds and a lingering sense that, once again, the joke’s on us.
