Elon: My role at DOGE “humble tech support”

Daily News Article   —   Posted on February 27, 2025

Following an opening prayer by HUD Secretary Scott Turner at yesterday’s first full cabinet meeting of his new term, President Trump asked Elon Musk to speak about his work with DOGE.

READ the following text of Elon’s comments (then watch the video below).  Reporters then answered questions, which are not included here in the transcript:

ELON MUSK: I actually just call myself Humble Tech Support here. Because this is actually — as crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that DOGE is doing — helping fix the government computer systems. Many of the systems are extremely old. They don’t communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems, and the software doesn’t work. We are actually tech support. It’s ironic, but it’s true.

The overall goal here with the DOGE team is to help address the fact that we simply cannot sustain a country with $2 trillion deficits. Just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the Defense Department’s spending. We spend a lot on the Defense Department — but we’re spending over $1 trillion on interest alone. If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt. It’s not optional. It’s essential.

That’s the reason I’m here. I’m taking a lot of flak, and I’m getting a lot of death threats here, by the way. But if we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt. That’s why it has to be done.

I’m confident at this point — knock on wood, knock on my wooden head — that we can actually find a trillion dollars in savings. That would be roughly 15% of a $7 trillion budget. And obviously, it can only be done with the support of everyone in this room.

I’d like to thank you all for your support. Thank you very much. This could only be done with your support. DOGE is a support function for the president and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings. To effectively find 15% in reduction in fraud and waste.

And we bring the receipts. Some people ask, well, is this real? Go to DOGE.gov. Line item by line item, we specify each expense. And I should say, we will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect. When we make mistakes, we’ll fix it very quickly.

For example, with USAID, one of the things accidentally canceled very briefly was ebola prevention, and we restored the ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption.

But we do need to move quickly if we are to achieve a trillion-dollar deficit reduction in FY 2026. It requires saving $4 billion per day, every day, from now through the end of September. But we can do it—and we will.

Watch the video of Mr. Musk’s comments and the following Q&A with reporters: