Elon Musk has revealed that he wouldn’t give his widely panned Department of Government Efficiency project another go.
On Tuesday, the billionaire told MAGA podcaster Katie Miller — the wife of top White House aide Stephen Miller and a former adviser for DOGE — that his federal cost-cutting crusade was “a little bit” and “somewhat successful.”
When asked if he’d give DOGE another go, Musk sighed.
“I mean, no, I don’t think so,” he said. “…I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically built — worked on my companies, essentially. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars.”
Earlier this year, Tesla vehicles saw a surge in violent attacks. Musk’s companies also faced mass protests after he took a chainsaw-wielding approach to federal spending, agencies and jobs.
Musk bid farewell to the DOGE gig in May, only for his feud with President Donald Trump to ignite on social media days later. The two appeared to make up while attending the memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in September.
DOGE is estimated to have cost the federal government over $21 billion, while cuts to foreign aid programs, as backed by DOGE, led to over 672,000 deaths, according to one estimate.
DOGE has since been disbanded, as of November, per Reuters.
Critics on social media went after Musk over his DOGE takeaways:
