Elon Musk, Against All Evidence, Insists DOGE Is “Careful”

The prevailing narrative about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is that it’s a shadowy operation, staffed by inexperienced, error-prone former interns (one of whom goes by the name Big Balls, and reportedly used to work for a cybercrime ring). They have infiltrated government agencies and, in one case, stand accused of breaking into an independent non-profit. As of last week, a Fox News poll showed that 58% of Americans disapprove of DOGE.

On Thursday night, in an interview with Fox News, Musk tried to turn that narrative around.

Flanked by seven DOGE officials—all of them proper grown-ups and at least one of them a fellow billionaire—Musk sought to frame the department as a fast-moving, but sober-minded effort to improve government services. “We want to be careful in the cuts,” Musk told Fox’s Bret Baier. “So we want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once. And actually that is our approach. They may characterize it as shooting from the hip, but it is anything but that.”

One wonders how many times they “measured” before they laid off—then had to immediately rehire—the people manning the nuclear arsenal, but I digress.

Joining Musk for the interview were Steve Davis, a top Musk lieutenant who previously worked at both SpaceX and X; Joe Gebbia, the billionaire co-founder of Airbnb; Aram Moghaddassi, a software engineer who reportedly worked at X; Brad Smith, a healthcare entrepreneur; Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley banker; Tom Krause, current CEO of Cloud Software Group; and Tyler Hassen, who said he left behind running five businesses to work for DOGE.

One person who wasn’t part of the discussion: the woman who supposedly runs it. The Trump administration has argued in court that Musk is not the administrator of DOGE, but is instead “an employee in the White House Office.” The acting administrator of the department, according to the White House, is actually Amy Gleason, a career official who previously worked for the U.S. Digital Service. But Gleason was conspicuously absent from the interview.

The DOGE officials who were interviewed spoke in patriotic terms about why they signed up. “I feel like this is me giving back to the country,” Hassen said.

Gebbia said he was inspired to join DOGE after learning about an old limestone mine where the government stores retirement paperwork. Processing that paperwork, he said, currently “takes many months.” He predicted with the characteristic confidence of a Silicon Valley executive that DOGE would reduce the process to “just many days” and that the system would be overhauled within the “next couple of months.”

Musk also made big promises about the timeline of his work. As a “special government employee,” Musk can work only 130 days out of every 365-day period. Asked whether he planned to stay on longer, Musk said, “I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion within that time frame.”

That may come as a relief to Tesla shareholders, as the company’s stock has plunged over the last two months, and its showrooms have become the target of vandalism. More than 200 additional Tesla protests are planned for this weekend.