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What Trump said about Elon Musk and DOGE
Trump was all praises for the tech billionaire as they discussed his leadership of the DOGE, space exploration and their longstanding relationship. “I wanted somebody really smart to work with me in terms of the country… He’s a leader. Yeah. He gets it done. I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find anyone smarter for the country. But this is the thing. We settled on this guy”, he said. Musk responded with a smile, “Well, thanks for having me.”
“I searched all over. I just couldn’t do it,” he added. “I couldn’t. I really tried hard. I couldn’t find anyone smarter.” “We settled on this guy,” Trump quipped, pointing to the billionaire X owner. The joint interview – the duo’s first together – was taped at the White House last week.
During the interview, Trump hinted that one of his primary goals heading into his second term in the Oval Office was to simply find “great people” to staff his administration and that while he only knew Musk “a little bit” before last year, he admired the way the tech tycoon “fought hard” in the private sector.
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“I wanted great people. And he’s a great person. He’s an amazing person. He’s also a caring person,” Trump said. “He’s a good person, a very good person, and he wants the country to do well,” the president went on, asserting that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any DOGE decisions where he might have a conflict of interest.
“If there’s a conflict, he won’t be involved,” Trump declared. “I mean, I wouldn’t want that, and he wouldn’t want it.”
The president noted his support for eliminating Biden-era electric vehicle mandates will probably hurt Musk’s bottom line. “He’s a very different kind of a character,” Trump said of Musk, touting the South African-born entrepreneur’s ability to attract “high-IQ individuals” to serve in the federal government.
Trump also appreciated Elon Musk’s SpaceX especially his Starlink satellite program, which has provided vital communication support in disaster-hit areas. Recounting the call he made to Musk during the North Carolina disaster, Trump said, “He got like thousands of units of this communication and it saved a lot of lives. He got it immediately, and I said, that’s pretty amazing.”
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Elon Musk and DOGE
Musk, who has set an ambitious goal to cut $1 trillion in federal spending, described Trump’s 2024 win as “an opportunity to fix the system” but not a fix in itself. Musk argued that it comes down to “competence and caring” when it comes to getting taxpayers a good deal, pointing to Trump’s tough negotiations with Boeing to drive down the cost of a new Air Force One plane by several billion dollars.
“When the president was shown the outrageous bill for the new Air Force One, and then negotiated it down, if the president had not applied competence and caring, the price would have been 50% higher — literally 50% higher,” Musk said.
“The president cared. The president was competent. The price was not 50% higher as a result,” he continued. “And so when you add more competence and caring, you get a better deal for the American people.”
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Since Trump’s inauguration, the Musk-led DOGE initiative has implemented sweeping cuts across federal agencies to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan denied a bid by Democrat-led states Tuesday to temporarily block Musk and DOGE from laying off federal workers and accessing sensitive data at seven government agencies. In recent weeks, DOGE has targeted its cost-cutting force on the US Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Agriculture.
