Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPACE) CEO Elon Musk said the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency—a new office created at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term—was only “somewhat” successful at cutting wasteful federal spending, and if he could do it over, he would not sign up again.
He said on a podcast that the department eliminated what he called “zombie payments” — federal disbursements lacking adequate coding or justification. “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” Musk said on “The Katie Miller Podcast.”
“I mean, we stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was just entirely wasteful. For example, there was probably $100, maybe $200 billion worth of zombie payments per year, which simply by enforcing that there be a payment code and an explanation for the payment, the payment would not go out.” he added.
“I guess I couldn’t believe I was there for the most part. It’s like — it all seemed extremely surreal at the time,” Musk told former Trump administration official Katie Miller.
When asked directly if he would go back and lead DOGE again, Musk answered, “No, I don’t think so,” adding that in hindsight he would rather have focused on his companies instead.
“I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” Musk said on the podcast. He described the backlash as “a very strong reaction” to his attempt to stop “political corruption.”
Around midyear, Musk and Trump had a bitter public fallout over the president’s sweeping tax and spending bill; however, some signs of reconciliation emerged later.
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