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Elon Musk and seven members of his so-called “department of government efficiency” sat down for a rare interview on Thursday evening on Fox News, defending their efforts amid public backlash and concern over cuts to key government agencies.
Over the course of an hour-long sit down with host Bret Baier, Musk and team members repeatedly attempted to assuage fears over Doge’s targeting of agencies such as the Social Security Administration. Musk also downplayed the number of government employees his initiative has targeted in cuts, saying it was a small percentage of the overall government workforce and others left voluntarily.
“Basically almost no one has gotten fired,” Musk claimed. His initiative has planned to layoff or offer buyouts to 100,000 federal employees, although courts have ordered thousands of workers to be reinstated after finding they were illegally fired.
Musk and his team at Doge have rapidly accumulated power across federal agencies since inauguration day. They have led the dismantling of USAID, the world’s largest single source of humanitarian aid, as well as fired thousands of government workers. Doge staffers and Musk allies have also gained access to sensitive government data, as well as been placed in key positions at major government agencies.
Doge staffers took turns during the interview framing their efforts as vital to the survival of the government and claiming their overhaul would help Americans. Asked about a Washington Post report that cuts at the Social Security Administration caused the agency’s website to repeatedly crash and resulted in long waits, Musk claimed that he would keep the website online and increase benefits.
“Legitimate recipients of social security will receive more money not less money,” Musk said. “Let the record show that I said this.”
Other members of Doge touted their previous experience working as tech executives, claiming that they could import ideas from Silicon Valley and private enterprises into government.
“We really believe that the government can have an Apple Store-like experience,” said Joe Gebbia, a Doge team member who co-founded Airbnb.
The Fox News interview on Thursday took place as nationwide protests are planned against Musk at Tesla showrooms this coming weekend. Doge is also facing nearly two dozen lawsuits that allege Musk and his team acted without legal authority while violating privacy and transparency laws. He has reacted to the legal pushback and judges’ rulings against the Trump administration by calling on Congress to impeach justices and radically overhaul the judicial system.
Many Doge members have also come under individual public and media scrutiny for their youth and lack of experience in government. Their behavior at agencies has drawn additional criticism from federal employees, who have reported that Doge staffers have siloed themselves off from other workers, hidden their names on video calls and set up Ikea beds to sleep inside federal buildings.
Several Doge workers have already become involved in scandals surrounding their suitability to work with sensitive government systems that affect millions of people. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old listed as a “senior adviser” at the state department, previously provided tech support to a cybercrime gang, according to a Reuters investigation.
Another Doge staffer who was given access to treasury department systems, 25-year-old Marko Elez, resigned following a Wall Street Journal report that found he was linked to a social media account that made numerous posts that advocated for racism and eugenics. Musk held a poll on X asking if Elez should return, however, and he was reinstated later that month at the Social Security Administration.
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Along with Doge’s group of young engineers, several of Musk’s top executives from his private businesses have also shifted over to his government work. Steve Davis, who helped facilitate Musk’s mass layoffs at X and became president of his Boring Company in 2018, is reportedly running Doge’s daily operations. Davis sat beside Musk during the interview on Thursday.
Polling shows that the majority of American voters disapprove of Musk’s initiative, with attitudes to Doge largely divided along partisan lines. Musk’s own favorability among Americans is similar, according to a Pew Research Center survey taken in late January which found Americans overall hold a more negative view of the Tesla CEO.
Musk previously appeared on Fox Business earlier this month to tout Doge’s achievements, as well as claim that he was planning on doubling the team’s staff. He has also been extremely active boasting about Doge’s cost-cutting efforts on X, the social media platform that he owns, although there has been very little public transparency into how the initiative is operating and what savings it is actually making. Analyses of Doge’s public “wall of receipts” website have found it full of errors and the site has deleted billions in claimed savings from its ledger without explanation.
In the same interview, Musk said he was running his slew of businesses, which include X, SpaceX and Tesla, “with great difficulty” because of his work with the Trump administration. Musk has lost some $100bn from his personal fortune due to a slump in Tesla’s stock this year.
Toward the end of the segment, Baier showed part of an additional one-on-one interview with Musk in which he was asked about calling the Arizona Senator Mark Kelly a “traitor” for visiting Ukraine. Musk appeared to double down on his attack, saying that Kelly’s credentials as navy combat veteran and former astronaut didn’t matter if he “put the interests of another country above America”.
