(NewsNation) — Elon Musk, who led the Department of Governmental Efficiency this year, says the cost-cutting department was “somewhat successful,” but that he wouldn’t do it again.
Musk’s commentary came during an interview on the “Katie Miller Pod” published Tuesday. Musk said, looking back, he would have rather focused on his companies instead, Tesla and SpaceX, citing the intense backlash he got for his DOGE work.
Katie Miller is the wife of top Trump administration official Stephen Miller, and she worked closely with Musk as an adviser and spokesperson for DOGE. During the interview, Miller asked the billionaire to look back on his time leading the controversial cost-cutting effort. As head of DOGE, Musk spearheaded massive cuts to federal spending and government jobs, including shutting down the foreign aid agency USAID. DOGE claimed it saved taxpayers billions, but that number is disputed, as hundreds of fired government workers eventually had to be rehired, and critics say many of the DOGE decisions caused chaos. In reflecting on what the agency accomplished, Musk had mixed reviews.
“Do you think you were successful?” Miller asked.
“We’re a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” Musk replied. “I mean, we stopped a lot of funding for, that really just made no sense; that was just entirely wasteful.”
DOGE was initially scheduled to run through July of 2026. Musk announced he was leaving back in May, and the Trump administration quietly disbanded the initiative shortly after. In November, the director of the Office of Personnel Management confirmed to Reuters that DOGE was no longer “a centralized entity.”
Musk had a very public falling out with Trump after he left the administration in May. In June, Musk called for Trump to be impeached and threatened to have SpaceX decommission a spacecraft needed by NASA in a series of social media posts. He later walked back this commentary.
In recent months, the two seem to have partly mended their relationship, after being spotted together at Charlie Kirk’s funeral in September and then again at a White House dinner for the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As for his companies, Tesla sales have begun to recover after months of boycotts over Musk’s political involvement with the Trump administration.