In the highly-anticipated interview with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on "Hannity," the powerhouse team talked about what it takes to save the American taxpayer money and achieve their goal of omitting excessive government spending.
"I think it's what the president mentioned earlier, which is that, in order to save taxpayer money, it comes down to two things, competence and caring," Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Chair, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
"If you add either ingredient, either competence or caring, you'll get a better outcome. But it's a sad reason that if you don't have competency, you don't have caring, you're going to get a terrible deal," Musk continued. "And the problem is that the American taxpayers have been getting a terrible deal because look at the last administration. Can you – can anyone – can any reasonable person say that the last administration was either competent or caring?"
Trump and Musk sat side-by-side to delve deeper into the alleged waste, fraud and abuse at the federal level, express their hopes to turn the U.S. political system into more of a democracy than bureaucracy and recommit to their federal budget cuts.
Since Trump took office last month, DOGE has been quick to enact widespread federal layoffs and begin investigations into multiple agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Defense, Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
"I think what we're seeing here is sort of the thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people," Musk said, before later adding: "I think the average taxpaying American should be mad as hell because their tax money is being poorly spent."
"They're finding billions, and [what] will be hundreds of billions, of dollars' worth of fraud. I say waste and abuse, but fraud, waste, and abuse. And he's doing an amazing job," Trump chimed in. "And I think you're going to see… a fantastic job done by him. He's a tremendous guy."
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Musk reiterated that DOGE’s "overall goal" is to cut $1 trillion from the national deficit – differing from the previous pledge of minimizing debt by $2 trillion. He and Trump added that they believe they’ve only identified one percent of existing waste.
"If the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt. This is a very important thing for people to understand. A country is no different from an individual, in that if an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt. And so can a country," Musk said. "We have just gotten started here."
