DOGE Offers Sneak Peak at Its Cost-Cutting Campaign in First Group Interview

‘We routinely encounter waste of a billion dollars or more. Casually,’ Musk says.

Elon Musk looks on during a Cabinet Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, on March 24, 2025. Brendan SmialowskiI/AFP via Getty Images

The team behind President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gave its first group interview Thursday.

Elon Musk and several DOGE staffers sat down with Fox News chief political correspondent Bret Baier to discuss the department’s mission and findings so far.

DOGE has been tasked by Trump with targeting fraud, abuse, and waste in the federal government.

Here are five takeaways from the DOGE team’s interview.

1. The Insiders

Since DOGE was formed, the team behind the department has largely remained behind the scenes. As its chief adviser, Musk has been the main face of Trump’s advisory panel.

Seven DOGE staffers expressed their passion for DOGE’s mission and why they got involved.

The interview featured Brad Smith, chief executive officer of Russell Street Ventures; Morgan Stanley banker Anthony Armstrong; software engineer Aram Moghaddassi; former oil executive Tyler Hassan; Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause, former SpaceX employee Steve Davis; and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.

Gebbia said that he was recruited by Musk to examine the retirement process. He is helping streamline the archaic process for federal workers. As an example, he cited a mine in Pennsylvania that houses millions of retirement documents.

Federal employees are required to go through retirement training to make sure they understand retirement options and benefits. Gebbia said that although the process can take months, when DOGE completes its overhaul, it will only take days.

“There’s a whole retirement process that they have to go through in order for them to retire, and I think we can do better for them,” Gebbia said.

Davis said during the interview that he became part of the DOGE team because its goal was “incredibly inspiring” to him. Everyone on the team was willing to put their lives on hold to help the government succeed, he said.

2. The Balance Sheet

Musk said during Thursday’s interview that the mission of DOGE is to reduce the U.S. deficit by a trillion dollars without affecting critical government services.

“Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion dollars a day, everyday, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding,” Musk said.

Musk called the amount of waste and fraud in the government “mind-blowing.”

In one example of waste, Musk said that the government was being charged nearly $1 billion dollars for a 10-question, online survey about national parks. In addition, he said that there appeared to be no “feedback loop” for the survey, meaning that the results of the survey were not ultimately used to achieve anything specific.

DOGE is discovering more examples of government waste on a daily basis, Musk said.

“We routinely encounter waste of a billion dollars or more. Casually.” 

3. The DOGE Pace

DOGE has been criticized for the speed at which it has carried out its cost-cutting campaign. The fast-and-furious pace has been irresponsible, according to many Democrats.

Contrary to popular belief, according to Musk, DOGE is meticulous in what it targets and ultimately cuts. According to Musk, its approach to slashing government waste is a “careful” one.

“We want to measure twice, if not thrice, and cut once,” Musk said.

He acknowledged that DOGE has made mistakes, and said those mistakes are corrected quickly. Musk touted his team’s transparency, noting that all the cuts are shared on DOGE’s X account and its official website.

When pressed about the disruptive nature of the DOGE process, Musk suggested that such change requires a major shakeup in the way the government has operated for so long.

“This is a revolution,” Musk stated. “I think it might be the biggest revolution of government since the first revolution. But at the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape. America will be solvent.”

4. Social Security

Democrats have accused Musk and DOGE of trying to eliminate Social Security.

Moghaddassi said that the opposite is actually true.

“It doesn’t line up with my experience on the ground,” he said. “I'll say the two improvements that we’re trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience everyday on a routine basis. And also make the experience better.”

Moghaddassi revealed that 40 percent of the calls that Social Security receives are from fraudsters who claim to be retirees.

The scammers steal social security numbers and attempt to change direct deposit numbers, Musk said. Due to loopholes, according to Musk, some social security money ends up in the wrong hands.

“As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of social security will receive more money, not less money,” Musk pledged.

DOGE is also looking at eliminating fraudulent individuals listed in the system.

According to Davis, there are more than 15 million Americans over the age of 120 who are marked as alive in the social security system.

Failing computer systems in different agencies, including social security, have also put Americans’ benefits at risk.

5. Firings

The DOGE team said the notion that federal workers have been fired has been mischaracterized.

Most of the employees who left the federal workforce have done so voluntarily, according to Armstrong.

“You’ve heard a lot of news about rifts, about people getting fired. At this moment in time, less than point-five, not one-point-five, of the federal workforce has actually been given [Reduction in Force] notice,” Armstrong said.

He also said that federal workers have been offered voluntary early retirement, voluntary separation agreements, and deferred resignations.

“Basically, almost no one has gotten fired, is what we’re saying.”

Meanwhile, an appeals court recently refused to halt a judge’s order requiring the Trump administration to rehire thousands of federal workers who said they were let go as part of DOGE’s cuts.

From NTD News

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the amount of the U.S. deficit Musk said the Department of Government Efficiency seeks to reduce. The Epoch Times regrets the error.