Elon Musk used a bizarre analogy involving pandas to defend the work of his now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency.
In an interview with entrepreneur Nikhil Kamath on his WTF Is podcast, Musk denied that DOGE’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts and its mandate to target federal “waste” included “stopping essential payments to needy people” in Africa.
“Fraudsters necessarily will come up with a very sympathetic argument. They’re not going to say, ‘Give us the money for fraud,’” Musk said. “They’re going to try to make these sympathetic-sounding arguments that are false.
“It’s going to be like the Save the Baby Pandas NGO, which is like, who doesn’t want to save the baby pandas? They’re adorable. But then it turns out no pandas are being saved in this thing, it’s just corruption, essentially.
“And you’re like, ‘Well, can you send us a picture of the panda?’ They’re like, ‘No.’ OK. Well, how do we know it’s going to the pandas?”
The interview with Musk was recorded last month, before it was reported that DOGE, which the world’s richest man previously headed, had been dissolved with eight months remaining on its contract.
The humiliating winding down of DOGE after less than a year marks a turbulent end to President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federal spending, which have resulted in the gutting of multiple agencies and thousands of workers being laid off.
Among some of the federal agencies targeted by DOGE as part of the cost-cutting mandate was the dismantling of the United States Digital Service, the shuttering of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which dealt with labor disputes.
In May, the Associated Press reported that 163,500 more children could die from hunger in Africa per year after DOGE moved to rapidly withdraw foreign aid distributed under the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Whether DOGE ended up removing or uncovering any examples of corruption or fraud in federal spending has come under intense scrutiny. By Musk’s own admission, DOGE also severely underperformed its goals.
Musk initially suggested the department would be able to reduce government spending by $2 trillion within its first year, before revising that figure down to $1 trillion.
Then Musk reduced expectations again and told a Cabinet meeting in April that DOGE would cut $150 billion in spending over the next fiscal year.
According to the “Wall of Receipts” on DOGE’s website, which has not been independently verified, the department claimed to have saved around $214 billion. Analysis from Politico in August found that DOGE had used “faulty math” to incorrectly claim it saved tens of billions of dollars by canceling federal contracts.
The disruptive nature of DOGE mirrored Musk’s own chaotic relationship with Trump. For months, the tech billionaire was seen as arguably the most influential person in Trump’s orbit, including pumping millions into his 2024 campaign and becoming the “first buddy” in the White House.
Musk left DOGE at the end of May and soon had a very public falling out with the president, which escalated to Musk suggesting the Jeffrey Epstein files had not been fully released because Trump’s name was in them. Since then Musk seems to have been brought back into the fold, and in late November he attended a White House dinner for Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Elsewhere in the interview, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO defended the work of DOGE and described his time at the department as an “interesting side quest.”
“I just got to see a lot of the inner workings of the government, and there’s been quite a few efficiencies,” Musk said.
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