Mega billionaire Elon Musk, in a friendly interview with his aide and conservative influencer Katie Miller, said his efforts leading the Department of Government Efficiency were only “somewhat successful” and he would not do it over again.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media platform X, still broadly defended President Donald Trump’s controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his DOGE work and its lack of popularity.
“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” he told Miller, who once worked as a DOGE spokeswoman charged with selling the agency’s work to the public.
When Miller pressed Musk on whether he would do it all over again, he said: “I don’t think so. ... Instead of doing DOGE, I would have, basically, built ... worked on my companies.”
Still, things certainly have turned up for Musk since his departure from Trump’s administration. Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
Musk credited the agency with saving as much as $200 billion annually in “zombie payments” that he said can be avoided with better automated systems and coding for federal payouts. However, that figure pales in comparison to his earlier claims that the agency could save trillions.
