Musk: The Goal Of DOGE Is To “Restore Democracy”

President Trump invited Elon Musk to the Oval Office on Tuesday, Feb. 11 to talk to reporters about progress being made by his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) team in reviewing and identifying government waste and fraud in federal government agencies. Read the text here. Watch the video (below the questions) of Musk’s comments, and the reporter Q&A following.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to be signing a very important deal today. It’s for DOGE, and I’m going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the things that we found, which are shocking — billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse. And I think it’s very important. That’s one of the reasons I got elected. I said, we’re going to do that.

Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick, and that corrupt. And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth—much more than that—in just a short period of time. And we want to weed out the corruption. It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, “We don’t want you to do that.”

So maybe we have to look at the judges because that’s very serious. I think it’s a very serious violation. I’ll ask Elon Musk to say a few words, and we’ll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.

ELON MUSK: Sure. So at a high level, if you say, “What is the goal of DOGE?”—I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy. This may seem like, well, aren’t we in a democracy? … Well, if you don’t have a feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrats — if the bureaucracy is in charge — then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president, the Senate, and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.

So it’s incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, that we fix that feedback loop, and that the public—the public’s elected representatives, the president, the House, and the Senate—decide what happens as opposed to a large unelected bureaucracy.

This is not to say that there aren’t some good — there are good people who are in the federal bureaucracy. But you can’t have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that is responsive to the people. That’s the whole point of a democracy.

And so if you asked the founders today and said, “What do you think of the way things have turned out?” Well, we have this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative.

And this is not something that people want. It does not match the will of the people. So it’s just something we’ve got to fix.

And we’ve also got to address the deficit. So we’ve got a $2 trillion deficit. And if we don’t do something about this deficit, the country’s going bankrupt. I mean, it’s really astounding that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we spend a lot of money on defense. But if that just keeps going, we’re essentially going to bankrupt the country.

So what I really want to say is, it’s not optional for us to reduce federal expenses. It’s essential. It’s essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it’s essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens, and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.

DONALD TRUMP: And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found? Some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about $30 million?

ELON MUSK: Well, we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know, what happened at USAID.

We’re just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they’re very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps. But mysteriously, they get wealthy. We don’t know why. Where does it come from?

And I think the reality is that they’re getting wealthy at taxpayer expense. That’s the honest truth of it.

So, you know, we’re looking at, say—well, if you look at, say, Treasury, for example—basic controls that should be in place, that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if a payment is on the “Do Not Pay” list, that you don’t actually pay it. None of those things are true currently.

So the reason that departments can’t pass audits is because the payments don’t have a categorization code. It’s like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building. So you can’t reconcile blank checks. You’ve got comment fields that are also blank, so you don’t know why the payment was made.

And then we’ve got this truly absurd “Do Not Pay” list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on. And we’re talking about terrorist organizations. We’re talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation. It can take up to a year to get on the list. And even once on the list, the list is not used. It’s mind-blowing.

So what we’re talking about here—really, we’re just talking about adding common-sense controls that should be present but that haven’t been present.

So you say, “Well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy.” But when you understand that really everything [at the Treasury Department] is geared toward complaint minimization, then you understand the motivations.

If people receive money, they don’t complain, obviously. But if people don’t receive money, they do complain. And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.

So then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that’s why they approve all the payments at Treasury. Because if you approve all the payments, you don’t get complaints.

But now we’re saying, “No, actually, we are going to complain if money is spent badly. If your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and frugal manner, then that’s not okay.”

Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on the things that matter to the people. I mean, these things—it’s just common sense. It’s not draconian or radical.

I think it’s really just saying, let’s look at each of these expenditures and say, “Is this actually in the best interest of the people?” And if it is, it’s approved. If it’s not, we should think about it.

So, you know, there’s crazy things like just a cursory examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old now. Do you know anyone who’s 150? I don’t know.

Okay, they should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. They’re missing out.

That’s a case where, like, I think they’re probably dead. It’s my guess. Or they should be very famous—one of the two.

And then there are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there’s no identifiable information. Why is there no identifying information? Obviously, we want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it, and that they receive it quickly and accurately.

I’ll tell you another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like we are trying to sort of rightsize the federal bureaucracy—just make sure that obviously there need to be a lot of people working for the federal government, but not as many as currently.

So we’re saying, “Well, okay, if people can retire with full benefits and everything, that would be good. They can retire, get their retirement payments, everything.”

And then we were told—this is actually, I think, a great anecdote—because we were told, “No, the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000.”

We’re like, “Well, why? Why is that?”

“Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated. They’re written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine.”

And I’m like, “What do you mean a mine?”

Like, “Yeah, there’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.”

And you look at a picture of this mine—we’ll post some pictures afterwards—and this mine looks like something out of the ’50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like it’s a time warp.

And then the speed—the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move—determines how many people can retire from the federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes. And then you can’t—nobody can retire.

Doesn’t that sound crazy? There’s like a thousand people that work on this.

So I think if we can take those people and say, “You know what? Instead of working in a mineshaft, carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine, you could do practically anything else, and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way.”

So anyway, I think, you know, that’s an example.

At a high level, if you say, “How do we increase prosperity?”—we get people to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles.

And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there is a higher standard of living available for one. That’s the actual goal.

Everyone’s very quiet. ARe people normally this quiet?

REPORTER: Your detractors, Mr. Musk, including a lot of Democrats.

ELON MUSK: I have detractors? I don’t believe it!

REPORTER: You do, sir. Some believe you’re orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non-transparent way. What’s your response to that criticism?

ELON MUSK: Well, first of all, you couldn’t ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted, a majority of the public voted for President Trump in office, winning the House, winning the Senate. The people voted for major reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The president spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major reform, and that’s what people are going to get. They’re going to get what they voted for.

A lot of times, you know, people don’t get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that’s what democracy is all about.”

REPORTER: It’s been asked—the White House said that you identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in fact, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?”

ELON MUSK: Well, actually, we’re trying to be as transparent as possible in our actions. We post our actions to the door and to the website, so all of our actions are maximally transparent. I don’t think there’s been—I don’t know of a case that is known to be more transparent than this organization.

You know, some of the things we’re doing are very, very simple and basic. They’re not, you know—what I mentioned before about Treasury—just making sure that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out, is counted. Congress currently mandates that, but the payment should be explained. A ‘do not pay’ list takes too long to actually get on, and payments that should not be made are currently being made.

These are not individual judgment decisions. These are simply about having sensible checks and balances in the system itself for taxpayer money. Just like you would in a private company.

REPORTER: Fine, but what about you? You’re in the company of interest when it comes to yourself. For instance, you received billions of dollars in federal contracts. When it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, what the president has directed you to look into—are you recusing yourself from that? And is there any sort of accountability, check, and balance in place?

ELON MUSK: We are providing transparency for the American people. Our actions are fully public.

So if you see something and you say, ‘Wait a second, hey, that doesn’t seem right, maybe that’s a conflict,’ I think people aren’t going to be shy about saying that. They’ll say it immediately.

But let’s get to work. Transparency is what builds trust, not simply having someone with a certain interest. It’s about making sure transparency allows people to see everything that’s going on. You can see whether I’m doing something that benefits one of my companies or not. It’s totally open.

DONALD TRUMP: And we thought that we would let him do that segment—look into that area—if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watch that also. He’s a big businessman, a successful one. That’s why we want him to do this. Would we rather have an unsuccessful guy doing this?

Now, one thing also—you know, we really should mention the groups of people getting some of these payments. It’s ridiculous. We’re talking about billions of dollars that we’ve already found. We’ve found fraud and abuse. I would say those two words as opposed to the third word I usually use. But in this case, fraud and abuse.

It’s abusive because most of these things are going to virtual, made-up entities. Certainly, money shouldn’t be sent. And you know what I’m talking about—it’s crazy. But we’re talking about tens of billions of dollars that we’ve already found. And now a judge—an activist judge—wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that?

I campaigned on this. I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt. And it is very corrupt. It’s very—it’s also foolish.

As an example, a man has a contract for three months. The contract ends, but they keep paying him for the next twenty years. You know, nobody ends a contract. You’ve got a lot of that. You have a contract that says ‘three-month contract,’ and now, normally, in fairness, the size of this thing is so big, yeah, but if you have a contract and you’re in a regular business, you end the contract.

But you know, it’s a consultant. He has a contract for three months, but it goes on for twenty years. The guy doesn’t say anything. He just keeps getting money. That’s the way they do it. They just keep getting checks month after month.

And they have various things like that, and even much worse than that, actually. Much worse. And I guess you could call that incompetence. Maybe it could be corruption. Could be a deal is made on both sides, where, you know—some money kicks back.

ELON MUSK: There’s a lot of kickbacks here.

DONALD TRUMP: I see a lot of kickbacks. Tremendous kickbacks. Because nobody could be so stupid to give some of these contracts. So there has to be a kickback.

That’s what I got elected for. That, and borders, and military, and a lot of things. But this is a big part of it. And I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do—what we got elected to do.

Among other things, find all of this fraud and abuse—all of this horrible stuff.

Go ahead.

We’ve already found millions of dollars that were wasted. Actually, more than that—billions. Many millions of dollars. And when you get down to it, it’s probably going to be close to a trillion dollars. It could be close to a trillion dollars that we’re going to find. And that will have quite an impact on the budget.

And then we go to a judge. And what do we get? A judge with a background in academia—nothing wrong with that, but he certainly has his own views—and he wants us to stop looking.

How do you stop looking? And we already found it.

We have a case in New York where a hotel was paid fifty-nine million dollars. Fifty-nine million. Because it was housing migrants—illegal migrants. Well, illegal, I believe.

ELON MUSK: And it was being paid twice the normal room rate at full occupancy. Unbelievable.

And just going back to the president’s comments at a high level, what are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half—from two trillion to one trillion?

“It’s really two things—competence and caring. Competence and caring are needed to cut the budget deficit in half. And I fully expect to be scrutinized—to be given a daily, detailed examination. I expect that.

So it’s not like I think I can get away with something. I’ll be scrutinized. But with the support of the president, we can cut the budget deficit in half—from two trillion to one trillion. And then with deregulation—because there are a lot of regulations that don’t really serve the public good—we need to free the economy.

If we do that, we’ll get economic growth—maybe three percent, four percent, maybe five percent. And that means you can get a trillion dollars in economic growth. You cut the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year there is no inflation. There’s no inflation in 2026 if the government stops borrowing so much. That means that interest costs decline. Everyone’s mortgage, car payment, credit card bills, student debt—monthly payments drop. That’s a fantastic scenario for the average American.”

Imagine a big purchase going on, and the price from one year to the next stays the same. The debt payments drop. How great is that for the average American?

DONALD TRUMP: We had no idea we were going to find this much. And it’s open. It’s not like complicated. It’s just simple. I can’t believe it. A lot of work, a lot of smart people involved — very, very smart people. But you’re talking about, anyway, maybe $500 billion. Crazy numbers.

You know, normally, when you’re looking at something, you find—you’re looking for one out of a hundred. But here, we’re reversing it. If you look for one, that’s good.

And you could look at the title, and you say, ‘Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that?’ And the public gets it. You have seen the polls, the public is saying, ‘Why are we paying all this money?’ This has gone on for years. This has gotten out of control.”

REPORTER: Senator Rand Paul today said that some of these DOGE cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress. Do you agree with that?”

DONALD TRUMP: I really don’t know. I know this: We’re finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse, fine, it’s fine with me. I think we’ll get the vote, although—

If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse, it’s fine with me. I think we’ll get the vote, although there’ll be some people that wouldn’t vote. And how could a judge want to hold us back from finding all of this fraud and finding all of this incompetence? Why would that happen? Why would even Congress want to do that now?

Congress, if we do need a vote, I think we get a very easy vote because we have a track record now. We’ve already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence, and corruption—a lot of corruption.

REPORTER: If the judge rules against one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling?

DONALD TRUMP: Will I abide by the courts? I always abide by the courts. Then I’ll have to appeal it. But then what he’s done is he’s slowed down the momentum, and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. You know, if a person’s crooked and they get caught, other people see that, and all of a sudden, it becomes harder later on.

So yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and we’ll appeal. But appeals take a long time. And I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show him, ‘Here’s a corrupt situation. We have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want to send this corrupt check to a person, or do you want us to give it and give it back to the taxpayer?’ I would hope a judge would say, ‘Don’t send it, give it back to the taxpayers.’

ELON MUSK: If I can add to that, what we’re finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we could all agree that if there’s going to be fraud, it should—you know, we talk almost every day, and, you know, I double-check things to make sure. ‘Is this something, Mr. President, you want us to do this?’ Well then, we’ll do it.