Elon Musk, who led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until stepping down, now says the agency’s work was “a little bit successful” — but admits he wouldn’t sign up for the job again.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO reflected on his time in charge of DOGE during a conversation with former department spokeswoman Katie Miller on her podcast, released Tuesday, Dec. 9.
Miller, who is married to Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, asked Musk whether DOGE achieved what he’d originally hoped.
“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” Musk replied. “We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful.”
Pressed on whether, knowing what he knows now, he would return to lead the government’s cost-cutting initiative, Musk said he would have preferred to stay focused on his businesses.
“I think instead of doing DOGE, I would’ve basically … worked in my companies, essentially. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” he said, referencing a rise in reported vandalism at Tesla dealerships and charging stations while he was running the agency.
Musk had served as a White House adviser and head of DOGE since the start of Trump’s second term, tasked with aggressively slashing what the administration viewed as unnecessary federal spending.
The mission quickly drew backlash. On Feb. 25, more than 20 civil service employees left DOGE in protest, refusing to use their technical skills to, in their words, “dismantle critical public services.”
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a resignation letter. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
“We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” they continued. “We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.”
By May, more than 200,000 federal employees had been laid off and about 75,000 more had accepted buyout packages, according to The Guardian. While Trump supporters praised DOGE as long-awaited belt-tightening, critics were alarmed by deep cuts to foreign aid, including the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development and other programs.
In a May 27 interview with The Washington Post, Musk said he believed DOGE was being scapegoated for wider troubles in the administration.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he said. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he added. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
The next day, on May 28, Musk announced on X — the social media platform he owns — that he was stepping down from his DOGE role.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he wrote. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
By November, however, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor told Reuters that the initiative “doesn’t exist” as a standalone program anymore and is no longer a “centralized entity,” despite an earlier executive order from Trump stating that DOGE would continue operating until July 2026.
According to its website, as of Oct. 4 the department estimated that its efforts had produced $214 billion in savings, which it calculated as $1,329.19 saved per taxpayer.
Looking back on the early days of DOGE on the podcast, Musk described the experience as “extremely surreal.”
“DOGE was a made-up name,” he recalled. “It had been made up two or three months before, based on Internet suggestions. I was going to call it the Government Efficiency Commission. And then someone on the Internet said, ‘No, it should be the Department of Government Efficiency,’ D-O-GE. And I’m like, ‘That sounds great.’ We just kind of made up a department.”
