WASHINGTON — Elon Musk defended the work of the Department of Government Efficiency Tuesday, saying the US should not be run by a “bureaucracy.”
Speaking next to President Trump in the Oval Office, the tech mogul argued he’s carrying out the commander-in-chief’s mandate by moving to fire thousands of government workers and cutting back on federal spending.
“If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a Democracy. We live in a bureaucracy,” Musk said.
The president gave Musk another mandate Tuesday to direct agencies to keep only “essential” employees and eliminate unneeded agencies altogether — giving him even more authority to overhaul the US government.
Critics have skewered DOGE for combing through federal agencies and eliminating vast tranches of money set aside for federal projects — including eliminating the entire US Agency for International Development, nixing a museum exhibit for former COVID czar Anthony Fauci and ending costly news subscriptions for federal bodies.
“We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have, ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Musk claimed.
“Which is what happened to USAID. We’re just curious as to where it came from…. I think the reality is that they’re getting wealthier at taxpayer expense.”
Musk did not provide any specific examples, though foreign contracting historically has been vulnerable to fraudulent self-dealing.
Opponents have expressed concern that Musk, the world’s richest man, is unelected, yet has great access to altering the executive branch.
Courts have pushed back on Trump’s push to revamp the federal government structure, and he said Tuesday he would “abide” by the rulings, but would be appealing.
Trump had invited Musk to the Oval Office to unveil an executive order further giving DOGE a mandate to fire non-essential federal workers.
The order, previewed by The Post, would apply to all federal workers other than those working in national security, public safety, law enforcement and immigration enforcement.
It also allows DOGE to shut down entire agencies.
The new order would kick in 90 days after Trump’s Jan. 20 directive implementing a federal hiring freeze.
The president argued he doesn’t need congressional approval to comb through the federal agencies for corruption and “fraud,” but that he would have their approval if he went ahead with a vote.
“We’re finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse, it’s fine with me, I think we’ll get the vote, although some people wouldn’t vote,” Trump said.
“I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do. We got elected to, among other things, find all of this fraud, abuse.”
DOGE is next set to look at the Department of Education and the Pentagon for unneeded government spending, and had recently been scrutinizing alleged Social Security fraud.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, claimed that his team has found instances of 150 year old people collecting Social Security benefits and suspiciously rich federal workers who he suspects of self-dealing.
“Just a cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone 150? I don’t, okay. They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They’re missing out,” Musk said.
“I think they’re probably dead. That’s my guess. Or they should be very famous. One of the two.”
The DOGE leader further highlighted what he said was a confounding issue slowing the pace of federal retirements.
“We were told that the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000… because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated. They’re written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine,” he said.
“There’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork… we will post some pictures afterwards… and the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government.”
Musk also acknowledged that he can be wrong at times as he highlights examples of the alleged waste on X, which he owns — including recent criticism of $50 million in US-funded condoms for Gaza, which turned out to be Gaza province, Mozambique, rather than the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave.
“Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. so nobody’s going to bat 1,000. You know, we will make mistakes, but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes,” he said.
“I’m not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly…That is really an enormous number of condoms if you think about it. But you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I’m like, ‘Okay, that’s not as bad. But still, you know, why are we doing that?’”
