Musk Says DOGE Team Faces Daily Death Threats

‘They’re just trying to do the right thing for the American taxpayer and for the American people,’ Musk said.

Elon Musk looks on during a cabinet meeting hosted by US President Donald Trump in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP

Elon Musk, who, as a special government employee, leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending, said on Monday that DOGE employees receive death threats daily.

Musk made the remarks during a March 24 White House cabinet meeting, which began with Trump administration officials praising him for identifying the wasteful spending they say has been found at their respective agencies and ended with Musk revealing the pressures faced by DOGE.

“The DOGE team is getting death threats every single day,” Musk said. “They’re just trying to do the right thing for the American taxpayer and for the American people.”

Musk previously said that DOGE needs to move boldly to cut federal spending because of the growing national debt and the associated rising costs of interest payments on that debt, warning that without cutting deficits and reducing debt, Medicare and Social Security will be affected.

“We either solve the deficit, or all we'll be doing is paying debt,” Musk told Fox News in an interview in late February. “It’s got to be solved, or there’s no medical care, there’s no Social Security, there’s no nothing. It’s got to be solved.”

During Monday’s meeting, Musk thanked the DOGE team for its service, adding that many of its members are talented young people who could be earning millions of dollars in the private sector, but “instead they come here, earn peanuts, and get death threats.”

President Donald Trump created DOGE on his first day in office, directing it to explore ways to eliminate wasteful government spending and streamline federal operations. DOGE has moved quickly to audit and pursue reforms across federal agencies, with the advisory body recently reporting $115 billion in savings through canceled grants, asset sales, workforce reductions, and terminated contracts and leases.

Critics say DOGE’s activities raise security and oversight issues, and a number of lawsuits have been filed in a bid to restrict its access to government data or declare its operations unconstitutional.

Trump opened the cabinet meeting by announcing what he said is a clear trend of manufacturing companies bringing their operations back to the United States in response to policies that encourage reshoring, including tariffs.

“I think they’re coming back because of the election that took place on November 5th and because of the fact that they have to come back because the tariffs are forcing them to come back,” Trump said. “Remember, there are no tariffs if you build here.”

Trump then turned his attention to federal spending and agency staffing cuts, noting that many of the employees fired as part of the DOGE-involved job reductions were people who were underperforming, or not showing up for work at all, or who existed in name only.

“They had on the government rolls people that don’t even exist,” Trump said. “Of the ones that did exist, as you know many didn’t come to work, many had no intention of coming to work. Many were paid and working someplace else. There were lots of bad scenarios, but they’re being weeded out.”

So far, DOGE’s work has led to proposed cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce.

Trump acknowledged that making staff cuts is “not necessarily a very popular thing” but added, “I think the American public understands we’re trying to save our country and make our country great again.”

A mid-February poll of Epoch Times readers shows overwhelming support for DOGE and its cost-cutting efforts. Respondents also expressed a strong desire for greater public visibility into its findings and called for accountability for those found to have participated in the misuse of taxpayer dollars.