Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk says his stint leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) delivered “a little bit” of success, but ultimately wasn’t worth the time he spent away from Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk shared the reflections in a podcast interview released Tuesday with Katie Miller — a former DOGE spokeswoman and the wife of Stephen Miller, who serves as President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff.
Operating from a small office inside the executive office building, Musk headed DOGE for several months, taking an aggressive approach to cutting federal workforce numbers and trimming government agencies after Trump began his second term in office.
However, Musk’s relationship with Trump shattered in June after he publicly attacked the administration’s flagship tax and spending bill, calling it “utterly insane and destructive.”
When Miller asked whether he would consider “doing DOGE again,” Musk was clear: “No, I don’t think so.”
He added that, in hindsight, he should have focused on his companies. “Instead of doing DOGE, I would’ve basically… worked in my companies, essentially. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” Musk said, referring to several vandalism incidents at Tesla dealerships and charging stations while he was involved with the government agency.
Despite the mixed feelings, Musk insisted the effort had produced results. “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,” he said. “We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful.”
Still, the true financial impact of DOGE remains unclear. Independent analysts argue that the savings reported by the US government — with the DOGE website currently claiming $214 billion in cuts — significantly overstate the actual reductions achieved.