Elon Musk believes DOGE has become the “whipping boy” for the federal government, taking the brunt of the blame when something bad happens, and that he’s disappointed with Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he told the Washington Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Musk, who said he would depart from DOGE in May, made the remarks as he returned to Texas to be closer to the action of his other companies, including SpaceX and Tesla.
The other companies, especially Tesla, were targets of violent attacks across the country, including firebombs.
“People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” Musk said.
The world’s richest man touted his victories with the Department of Government Efficiency but claimed there was still work to be done.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he said. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in DC, to say the least.”
Musk insisted his time with DOGE wasn’t completely over as he wanted to help guide the department around the federal bureaucracy’s computer systems.
“There’s, like, so many situations where the computers are so broken,” he told the outlet, “even in the intelligence world,” where in order to transfer “data from one computer to another, you have to print it out and then type it into the next computer. And this is just literally a thing that was brought to my attention.”
Musk, a key figure in the early days of President Trump’s return to the White House, shed light on some of the rare disagreements he had with the 78-year-old commander in chief.
He expressed his disappointment in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” as it “undermines” the work he did while leading DOGE in reducing government waste.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS News in a promotion to an interview to be released next week.
Musk, who was often pictured with Trump in and around the White House, also shared his skepticism of the name of the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” he said, “but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
The bill, officially “House Resolution 1 – One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” was a major legislative issue touted by Trump in his first five months of his second term.
Trump faced several roadblocks in the bill’s journey to being passed.
House Republicans narrowly passed the legislation 215-214 during an all-night marathon on May 21.
The bill must now go to the Senate, with GOP leaders hoping to have it on Trump’s desk by July 4, but additional challenges are expected as some GOP holdouts look for additional spending cuts and insist on preserving current rules around Medicaid.
Musk’s comments are a change in tone to his stance when he was frequently pictured around the 78-year-old president when he led the Department of Government Efficiency during his 4-month appointment in the White House.
