A defensive Elon Musk shut down an interviewer by saying “it’s like talking to a computer,” because she dared ask about his DOGE failure.
The billionaire excitedly proclaimed at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in October that his task force would save “at least $2 trillion.” By early January, he had walked back on this figure, telling political strategist Mark Penn in an interview on X that $1 trillion was the new goal.
Musk has now “gone back home to his cars,” as President Trump put it. With the curtain coming down on his DOGE tenure, the Tesla CEO and his goons have only saved the government an estimated $160 billion, a fraction of his original forecast. New analysis from the Financial Times, however, claims that the amount of savings that can be verified is actually much less than the figure touted by Musk.
When pressed on this Tuesday during an interview with Bloomberg editor Mishal Husain at the Qatar Economic Forum, Trump’s former “buddy in chief” went on the defensive.
“You’ve talked about $4 billion a day being saved,” Husain said. “And I think everyone can agree that combating waste and inefficiency in government is a very good thing, but if you add that up, it’s not gonna get to $2 trillion over the lifetime of DOGE.”
Musk looked visibly perturbed by the suggestion that his own forecasts were erroneous. “I’m sorry?” he shot back, with Husain then repeating her comment.
“I mean, I feel you’re somewhat trapped in the NPC [‘non-playable character,’ video game parlance] dialogue tree of a traditional journalist,” Musk replied.
“So it’s difficult when I’m conversing with someone who’s trapped in the dialogue tree of a conventional journalist because it’s like talking to a computer.”
He then told the journalist that “in the context” of his perceived restraints on the Department of Government Efficiency, the group has excelled.
“DOGE is an advisory group. We’re doing the best we can as an advisory group. The progress made thus far as an advisory group is excellent,” he said.
“I don’t think any advisory group has done better in the history of advisory groups for the government. Now, we do not make the laws, nor do we control the judiciary, nor do we control the executive branch. We are simply advisors.”
He went on: “In that context, we’re doing very well. Beyond that, we cannot take action beyond that because we are not some sort of imperial dictator of the government. There are three branches of the government that are to some degree opposed to that level of cost savings.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he fired back at fellow tech billionaire Bill Gates with a Jeffrey Epstein reference after the Microsoft co-founder accused him of “killing the world’s poorest children” with his DOGE work. This is a reference to its slashing of important foreign aid programs.
“Who does Bill Gates think he is to make comments about the welfare of children, given that he frequented Jeffrey Epstein?” Musk said, to scattered applause from the audience.
“I wouldn’t want that guy to babysit my kids,” he added. Gates met with Epstein multiple times in the 2010s, even after Epstein had served jail time for soliciting a minor and was registered as a sex offender.
What Musk failed to mention is that he himself once visited Epstein at his Manhattan home—after the financier pled guilty to and was convicted for procuring an underage girl for prostitution in 2008. And in 2011 Musk attended the same “billionaires’ dinner” as Epstein.
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