Elon Musk says DOGE was ‘a little bit successful’

Elon Musk speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Billionaire Elon Musk believes his cost-cutting stint as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was “a little bit successful,” though he thinks he could have otherwise spent time focusing on his companies.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder made the remarks in a podcast interview released Tuesday with Katie Miller -- a former DOGE spokeswoman and wife of Stephen Miller, U.S. President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff.

Working out of a small bureau in the executive office building, Musk led DOGE for several months, taking a hatchet to the US federal workforce and agencies after Trump returned to office for his second term.

But Musk broke spectacularly with Trump in June over the White House’s flagship tax and spending bill, which he called “utterly insane and destructive.”

When asked if he would “do DOGE again,” Musk answered: “No, I don’t think so.”

“I think instead of doing DOGE, I would’ve basically...worked in my companies, essentially. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars.”

The comment referenced incidents of vandalism reported at Tesla dealerships and charging stations while Musk was at the helm of DOGE.

“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” Musk told the podcast. “We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful.”

The actual savings from DOGE have been hard to quantify, with independent observers insisting the figures claimed by the US government -- the DOGE website currently posts cuts of $214 billon -- fall short of actual savings.