WASHINGTON — Elon Musk said Thursday that slashing a trillion in federal spending is “quite achievable” without impacting the core services — and vowed that Social Security recipients “will receive more money” thanks to their work.
Musk, 54, expressed confidence in getting close to that goal, which would halve the annual federal deficit, in just 130 days — saying his team was averaging “$4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week.”
“This is a revolution, and I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution,” the world’s richest man told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier as he and a group of Department of Government Efficiency associates took questions in their first joint interview.
“America will be solvent,” the DOGE chief declared. “The critical programs that people depend upon will work, and it’s going to be a fantastic future. And are we going to get a lot of complaints along the way? Absolutely.”
If Musk’s $4 billion-a-day rate holds, that would amount to $520 billion within the 130-day window in which he’s legally allowed to serve as an unpaid special government employee.
“I think we will accomplish most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within [130 days],” Musk told Baier.
“Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding.”
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X has blazed through federal agencies since late January, overseeing the mass-firing of staffers and dramatically reducing agency spending, including all but shuttering the 10,000-person USAID and the 1,700-person Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
It’s unclear precisely how much the DOGE-led initiative has trimmed so far — as major looming targets, including the Pentagon, remain largely untouched.
“Unless this exercise is successful, the ship of America will sink,” Musk told Baier. “That’s why we’re doing it.”
‘More Social Security, not less’
Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE software engineer, spoke about the reforms being made at the Social Security Administration — amid reports of website problems impacting the 68 million Americans who receive retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits.
“I’ll say the two improvements that we’re trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits — protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis — and also make the experience better,” the engineer said.
“When you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters” who are trying to steal payments, he said.
Musk chimed in: “In fact, what we’re doing will help their benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of DOGE, will receive more Social Security, not less. I want to emphasize that, as a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money.”
“The 94-year-old grandmother is actually a result of DOGE’s work going to get her check, she’s not going to be robbed by forces like she’s getting robbed today, and the solvency of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those social security checks,” Musk added.
“The reason we’re doing this is because if we don’t do it, America is going to go insolvent and go bankrupt, and nobody’s going to get anything.”
Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia, a fellow billionaire, discussed his work with DOGE on digitizing the retirement process for government employees, which currently is done on paper, limiting retirements at about 8,000 per month.
“It’s an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching the show tonight,” Gebbia said.
“We really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience — beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.”
‘Almost no one’s gotten fired’
Musk and his top lieutenants said that despite mass terminations — including most of USAID and CFPB and, more recently, 50% of the Education Department’s staff, along with new probationary hires across the federal bureaucracy — there actually have been few firings as a share of the overall federal workforce.
The team cited the fact that about 75,000 of federal workers accepted buyout offers — out of the more than 3 million-person federal workforce.
Anthony Armstrong, a former Morgan Stanley banker who works for DOGE at the Office of Personnel Management, said that, “you’ve heard a lot of news about [reductions in force], about people getting fired at this moment in time, less than .15, not 1.5 less than .15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice.”
“Basically almost no one’s gotten fired,” Musk added.
