Musk Calls DOGE Successful But Says He Wouldn't Do It Again
Elon Musk is looking back at his whirlwind stint leading Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — and he’s pretty sure it’s a chapter that he wouldn’t reopen.
In a long conversation on The Katie Miller Podcast, Musk described DOGE’s push to cut federal spending as “a little bit successful” and said the group did manage to shut down funding he viewed as pointless. But when Miller asked if he’d take the job again, his answer was blunt: “No, I don’t think so.”
Musk said that if he could rewind the year, he would have stayed focused on his companies. As he put it, “They wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” a reference to the vandalism and arson attacks on Tesla vehicles that came after his increasingly political public persona. The backlash didn’t stop at property damage — Tesla sales slumped, protests spread, and Cybertruck vandalism became a frequent headline.
DOGE itself was born on Trump’s first day back in office, with its meme-inspired name pulled from online suggestions. The group operated at breakneck speed, targeting agencies for shutdown, pushing steep cuts to the federal workforce, and at times even eliminating entire programs — moves that triggered lawsuits and pushback from federal employees and lawmakers. DOGE claimed that it made massive savings, but without transparent accounting, outside experts have questioned those numbers.
Musk’s time in Washington also came with political whiplash. After donating heavily to Trump and spending months inside the White House inner circle, the two had a dramatic falling-out over a spending bill. The feud spilled onto social media, with Trump even hinting at probing Musk’s business ties. But the tension appears to have cooled: Musk attended a White House dinner in November, and in his podcast interview he praised Trump, calling him “the funniest person” he knows with “great sense of humour.”
Still, Musk seems clear on one thing — DOGE won’t be getting a sequel, at least not with him in charge.
