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Elon Musk on Thursday led a team of DOGE leaders to defend their work in a Fox News interview as they attempt what Musk calls the biggest government revolution since 1775.
“This is a revolution, and I think it might be the biggest revolution in the government since the original revolution,” the Department of Government Efficiency told Fox’s Bret Baier.
Here are five takeaways from the roughly half-hour-long interview.
Who leads DOGE?
Notably, the interview — advertised as offering a look behind the curtain — featured eight members of DOGE, all men.
The group has some 79 directly appointed employees and 10 staffers detailed from other agencies and no organizational chart, according to court testimony. In an earlier interview with Fox, Musk claimed DOGE now operates in almost every federal agency and that his team has grown to more than 100 staffers, with plans to expand to 200.
Missing from the interview was Amy Gleason, the named DOGE administrator, but who appears to be just a figurehead. In court, President Donald Trump’s administration has argued that Musk isn’t an actual DOGE employee and has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
“I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency ... which is headed by Elon Musk,” Trump said during his recent address to a joint session of Congress.
Denying Musk an official role can help make it harder to prove any ethics violations regarding alleged conflicts of interest, according to experts. Musk leads several major firms, including Tesla (TSLA-3.99%) and SpaceX, several of which are regulated by government agencies or have federal contracts.
The members of DOGE that appeared alongside Musk in the Fox News interview include Airbnb (ABNB-3.88%) founder and Tesla board member Joe Gebbia, who said he is working on digitizing retirement documents, and Steve Davis, who has worked at SpaceX, the Boring Company, and helped during Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Davis has been described as the chief operating officer of DOGE and has reportedly led much of the day-to-day operations.
Also featured in the interview were Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause, who has been put in a key position at the Treasury Department; Brad Smith, a healthcare entrepreneur who worked with Gleason when she was chief products offer at one of his firms; Anthony Armstrong, a Morgan Stanley (MS-3.41%) banker working at the Office of Personnel Management; Tyker Hassan, a former oil executive working in the Interior Department; and Aram Moghaddassi, a former xAi and Neuralink employee who said he is working on Social Security.
$4 billion slashed every day
Musk claims DOGE is cutting an average of $4 billion “every day, seven days a week” in federal spending. At that rate, by the time Musk’s tenure as a special government employee — a role that helps him avoid some ethics concerns — DOGE would save $520 billion.
“I think we will accomplish most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within” 130 days, Musk told Baier.
Musk has originally sought to slash as much as $2 trillion from the federal deficit, before later saying there’s a “good chance” of cutting $1 trillion. The federal government spent more than $6.7 trillion last fiscal year, with the largest payments directed toward Social Security, Medicare, interest payments, defense spending, and other assorted health costs.
The group’s website claims to have saved $130 billion as of March 24, but it’s difficult to estimate exactly how much DOGE has saved. In some cases, the group has taken credit for savings on contracts that expired years ago, including one that ended in June 2005. As the New York Times reported, the five largest contracts DOGE claimed credit for canceling in its original list of axed deals were incorrect. In one instance, a contract listed by the group as worth $8 million was actually worth $8 billion.
Government as an ‘Apple Store’
Gebbia said he joined DOGE after hearing about Iron Mountain West Pennsylvania, a limestone mine where the federal government houses and processes retirement paperwork more than 200 feet underground. Some 10,000 applications are processed each month.
“The process takes many months and we’re going to make it just many days,” Gebbia said. “I really think it’s an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes.”
“We really believe the government can have an Apple Store-like experience. Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems,” he added.
According to the chief executive of Iron Mountain (IRM-0.57%), which acquired the limestone mine’s owner in 1998, the company makes $130 million in revenue from its data center and digitization transformation businesses. Just $10 million is earned from the government storing physical documents in sites like the mine.
“We see this as a continued opportunity for the company,” Iron Mountain CEO Bill Meaney said on a February earnings call of DOGE’s efforts.
Move fast and break things
Musk has always relied on the tried-and-true mantra of Silicon Valley: “Move fast and break things,” then deal with the clean-up later. He’s brought that with him to the federal government.
“In the context of the government we’re moving like lightning,” Musk said. But the team is still moving “slower than I’d like.”
In addition to its other errors, the team has had to reinstate some agreements that were mistakenly nixed. That includes funding for work preventing the spread of Ebola, which Musk claimed was restored “immediately” and without causing “interruption.” In reality, DOGE’s work gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development drastically hindered that work.
The Social Security Administration website has repeatedly crashed this month due to overloaded servers, while layoffs have left remaining staffers overwhelmed with phone calls. The administration’s acting commissioner has said that DOGE is really in charge.
Moghaddassi, who has been put to work at the administration, said criticism of DOGE’s work there “doesn’t line up with my experience on the ground.” He added that DOGE is looking to make Americans’ experience with Social Security better and combat fraud.
“In fact, what we’re doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of DOGE, will receive more Social Security, not less,” Musk added. “I want to emphasize that, as a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.”
DOGE has fired ‘almost no one’
The DOGE officials on Thursday claimed that barely any workers in the federal government have been fired. Armstrong, the banker turned OPM staffer, said that most workers have left through “voluntary means.”
“And you’ve heard a lot of news about [Reduction in Force notices], about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than 0.15, not 1.5, less than 0.15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice,” Armstrong said.
“Basically, almost no one has gotten fired. That’s what we’re saying,” Musk added.
Thousands of workers have already been laid off or offered a buyout, although some have been reinstated after court orders. An appeals court on Thursday refused to halt a judge’s order requiring the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal workers.
Cutting the 2.3-million-person federal workforce has been a major part of Musk’s vision for DOGE’s government overhaul. Most federal agencies have reportedly handed in plans for reshaping their workforce, which is set to be implemented in April.
The Washington Post, citing an internal White House document, reports that agencies are preparing to cut between 8% and 50% of their staff. The document, which was updated last week, covered 22 agencies.
Forty-three percent of the Small Business Administration, 28% of the National Science Foundation, and 8% of the Justice Department could be cut, according to the Post. Half of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and almost a quarter of the Interior Department could also be cut.
The Internal Revenue Service may slash as much as half of the 90,000 workers it employs, while more than 80,000 workers may be cut from the the Veteran Affairs Department, The Associated Press reports. The Health and Human Services Department said Thursday that some 3,500 jobs will be cut at the Food and Drug Administration.