- Politico reported Trump might reduce Elon Musk's DOGE role, but Press Secretary Leavitt quickly said the claims had no backing.
- Musk's DOGE team identified significant government inefficiencies, including fraudulent loans to children under 11 and deceased individuals over 120.
- DOGE team members say they're working without financial compensation because they believe they're addressing a critical fiscal crisis that threatens America's future.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied reports that Elon Musk was preparing to step down from his role with DOGE, as first reported by Politico.
The news outlet reported Wednesday that President Donald Trump said that Musk would step back in coming weeks “from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man.”
Leavitt denied the story’s accuracy in an X post.
“Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete,” she wrote.
Currently, Musk is working as a “special government employee,” and unless changed, this status will last until the end of May or early June.
These rumors come days after Musk and his team sat for a joint interview with Bret Baier on Friday.
DOGE team shares example stats on government inefficiencies
In his interview with Baier, Musk said over $300 million in small business administration loans were granted to children under the age of 11, and another $333 million to people over the age of 115. With the oldest American currently 114 years old, Musk said these loans indicate fraud.
He said he believes much of the fraud they’re finding is a result of government systems not communicating with each other.
“You don’t know at the Small Business Administration that you’re giving a loan to a 9 month old, which happened in one case, because you’re not cross referencing that with the Social Security Administration data that has birthdates,” Anthony Armstrong told Baier.
Armstrong is a Morgan Stanley banker who has been working for DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management.
Musk added, “A fraudster can now get unemployment and disability from a dead person. This is happening all the time, at scale,” Musk said.
The president of the Boring Company, Steve Davis, who also works for DOGE, told Baier the federal government’s credit card excess is another point of inefficiency DOGE is trying to curb.
“There are, in the federal government, around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “And so one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we’ve worked with the agencies and said, ‘Do you need all these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?‘”
Davis said since they started to crack down on credit cards within departments, the number has dropped from 4.6 million to 4.3 million.
Why are DOGE staffers putting their lives on hold for this?
Neither Musk nor his team are benefitting financially from their involvement with DOGE, so Baier asked the group why they would put their lives on hold for it.
Ivy League graduate and energy executive Tyler Hassen told Baier he was running five businesses in Houston when he left to join DOGE.
“My wonderful wife said, ‘Go for it,’ and here I am. But I feel like this is me giving back to the country,” Hassen said.
Similarly, Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause spoke about his family. “This is a real fiscal crisis,” he said. “And what’s worse, back to my children and everyone else’s children — we’re burdening them with that debt, and it’s only going to grow.”
Musk added, “If we don’t do this, we’re sunk. Unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink.”
Hassen described his efforts with the Interior Department. “Under the Biden administration, there was no oversight in the Department of Interior, whatsoever,” he said. “We’re now reviewing every single contract, every single grant, and when things come to my attention that don’t make sense, I’m bringing them to Secretary (Doug) Burgum, and he’s been fantastic.”
“This is a revolution. It might be the biggest revolution of government since the original revolution,” Musk said.
If not the 115-year-olds, who are the people DOGE could help?
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia told Baier that DOGE efforts are actually helping middle-level employees. “People are inspired,” he said.
He talked about his efforts to modernize the federal retirement process, which currently takes place on paper in a limestone mine in Western Pennsylvania.
“They’ve been trying to modernize and get off of paper since the early 2000s, very unsuccessfully … it’s an interesting problem. We can use design to solve it and good engineering and create a better experience for everybody,” Gebbia said.