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The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media
platform X, still broadly defended President Donald Trump's
controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before
it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how
difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he
acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his
DOGE work and its lack of popularity.
“We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful,”
he told Miller, who once worked as a DOGE spokeswoman charged
with selling the agency's work to the public.
When Miller pressed Musk on whether he would do it all over
again, he said: “I don't think so. ... Instead of doing DOGE, I
would have, basically, built ... worked on my companies.”
Almost wistfully, Musk added, “They wouldn't have been burning
the cars" — a reference to consumer protests against Tesla.
Still, things certainly have turned up for Musk since his
departure from Trump's administration. Tesla shareholders
approved a pay package that could make Musk the world’s first
trillionaire.
Musk was speaking as a guest on the “Katie Miller Podcast,”
which Miller, who is married to top Trump adviser Stephen
Miller, launched after leaving government employment to work for
Musk in the private sector. The two sat in chairs facing each
other for a conversation that lasted more than 50 minutes and
spanned topics from DOGE to Musk's thoughts on AI, social media,
conspiracy theories and fashion.
Miller did not press Musk on the innerworkings of DOGE and the
controversial manner in which it took over federal agencies and
data systems.
Musk credited the agency with saving as much as $200 billion
annually in “zombie payments” that he said can be avoided with
better automated systems and coding for federal payouts. But
that number is dwarfed by Musk's ambitious promises at one time
that an efficiency commission could measure savings in the
trillions. Miller has not responded to an Associated Press
request for comment.
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