Elon Musk is complaining about the firestorm of criticism that has engulfed his work with the Trump administration.
After calling out President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” for undermining the work of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency—which Trump tasked with culling thousands of workers from the federal government—the Tesla billionaire is also claiming that his task force is being unfairly blamed for the failings of others.
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told The Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Speaking on the day that yet another of his SpaceX Starship launches ended in fiery failure, Musk also groused about how his role with DOGE has led to an intense backlash against his companies.
“People were burning Teslas,” Musk told the Post. “Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”
Musk further expressed dismay that his work with DOGE has proven to be more difficult than he anticipated, having only saved a fraction of the $2 trillion he vowed to cut from the federal budget.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
Musk’s comments came after he expressed disappointment in Trump’s beloved “Big Beautiful Bill” for sabotaging his work with DOGE.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said during an interview with CBS News.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both.”
After initially promising to cut $2 trillion in October, Musk later walked back that figure in January by admitting the goal was a “best-case scenario.” He nevertheless maintained DOGE had a “good shot” at saving $1 trillion.
Since Musk announced his intention in to “significantly” reduce his time with DOGE as Tesla sales plummet, the cost-cutting task force is still only claiming to have found $170 billion in savings—though questions remain over how much of the savings can be verified.
Meanwhile, Trump’s bill—which will partly fund tax cuts for the rich through sweeping cuts to Medicaid—will add around $3.8 trillion to the national deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Despite feeling burned by the administration, Musk has said he still plans to allocate some of his time to working with DOGE, although he has since downgraded the department’s aspirations from decimating the federal workforce to improving their tech support.
“There’s, like, so many situations where the computers are so broken,” even in the intelligence world,” Musk told the Post. His efforts will now be spent “a bit more like tackling projects with the highest gain for the pain, which still means a lot of good things in terms of reducing waste and fraud.”
Polling data has suggested that Musk is among the least popular figures in Trump’s administration. Analysts also say that furious anti-Musk protests in the U.S. and overseas have contributed to severe brand damage for some of his companies.
In Europe, where Musk has faced intense blowback for supporting far-right politicians, Tesla sales roughly halved in April compared with last year’s figures.
In addition to his lack of polling popularity, Musk’s bona fides as a political operator have also come into question. After his preferred candidate suffered a crushing loss in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court election despite Musk’s record $21 million spend on the race, Musk has vowed to cut back on his political donations in the future.
“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk told Ars Technica on Tuesday when asked if he thought his activities over the last year had harmed SpaceX. “It’s less than people would think, because the media is going to over-represent any political stuff, because political bones of contention get a lot of traction in the media.”
“It’s not like I left the companies,” he added. “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”
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