He's a high IQ individual.
He's got this -- check out this cool chain he's got.
So, thank you very much. We had a busy day today, the king just left, and we've had a great discussion, terrific discussion concerning Gaza and everything else. We had discussions also about Saturday at 12:00. It's going to be a big moment. We'll see what happens. I don't expect much happening with these people, but we'll see what happens.
And we're going to be signing a very important deal today. It's 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 and 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.
We want to weed out the corruption, and 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 a 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.
Sure. So, the -- at a high level, you say what is the goal of DOGE or -- and 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 -- OK, it's all right, I'll tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
So, if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat -- 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 and 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, we fix that feedback loop, and that 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 if you looked at the -- if you asked to look at 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, and it's not -- 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 this -- 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've got a lot -- we spend a lot of money on defense. But -- and if that just keeps going, we're essentially going to bankrupt the country. So, what I want to say is like it's not optional for us to reduce the 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.
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, etc.?
Well, we do find it sort of rather odd that 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 just, there seems to be 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 the taxpayer expense, that's the honest truth of it. So, we're looking at say, well, just if you look and 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, a Do Not Pay list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a Do Not Pay list. 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 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, we're really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present that haven't been present. So, you say like, well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy. That when you understand that really everything is geared towards complaint minimization, then you understand the motivations.
So, 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 everything just -- 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 OK. Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on 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, crazy things like just 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, OK. They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records, they're missing out. So, that's a case where I think they're probably dead, is my guess, or they should be very famous -- one of the two. And then there's a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identifying information.
Well, 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, one of the things is like we are trying to sort of right size the federal bureaucracy, just to make sure that there's 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, OK, if people can retire with full benefits and everything that 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 that the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why is that?
Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper, it's manually calculated, then written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine. And 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 looks like something out of the '50s because it was started in 1955. So, it looks like a time warp.
And then the speed, then 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 mine shaft and carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine shaft, 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. So, I think that's an example -- at a high level, if you say how do we increase prosperity, is 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's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's the actual goal. Everyone's very quiet, by the way. Are people normally this quiet?
Your detractors, Mr. Musk -- Including a lot of democrats.
I have detractors?
You do, sir.
I don't believe it.
Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a nontransparent way. What's your response to that criticism?
Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted -- we had a majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. We won the House. We won the Senate. The people voted for major government 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 government reform and that's what the people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for. And a lot of times, 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.
Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?
Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions -- we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been -- I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.
And so, the kind of things we're doing are I think very, very simple and basic. They're not what I mentioned, for example, about Treasury, just making sure that that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the Do Not Pay list, which takes a lot to get there, they actually are not paid, which currently they are paid.
These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So, it's got nothing to do with, say, a contract for some company of mine at all.
But if there is a conflict of interest, when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon for instance, which the president I know has directed you to look into. Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability, check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?
Well, all of our actions are fully public, so if you see anything you say wait a second, hey, Elon, that doesn't -- that seems like maybe that there's a conflict there. It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that, they'll say it immediately.
Including you yourself?
Yes, but transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust. Not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency so you can see everything that's going on. And you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious.
And then we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watched that also. He's a big businessman. He's a successful guy. That's why we want him doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this.
Now one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments, they're ridiculous and we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse, I would say those two words as opposed to the third word that I usually use, but in this case, fraud and abuse.
It's abusive because most of these things are virtually made up or certainly money shouldn't be sent to them. And you know what I'm talking about, it's crazy. So -- but we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found. And now a judge who's 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. Is so big. But if you have a contract and you're in a regular business, you end the contract in three months. You know, it's a consultant. Here's a contract for three months, but it goes on for 20 years.
And the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month. And you have various things like that. And even much worse than that. Actually, much worse. And I guess you call that incompetence, maybe.
Yeah.
It could be corruption. It could be a deal's made on both sides. You know where. You have got to get some money. He kicks back. I think he has a lot of kickback here. I see a lot of kickback here.
There is. There's a lot of kickbacks.
A tremendous kickback. Because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts, so he has to get a kickback. So uh, 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. We got elected to -- to among other things, find all of this fraud and abuse, all of this -- this horrible stuff going on. And we've already found billions of dollars, not like a little bit, billions, many billions of dollars.
And when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to $1 trillion.
Yeah.
It could be close to $1 trillion that we're going to find. That will have quite an impact on the budget.
Yes.
And -- and you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge, and he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings, and he wants us to stop looking. How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it. We have a case in New York where a hotel was paid $59 million, $59 million because of -- because it's housing migrants, illegal migrants.
All illegal, I believe.
And they were being paid twice the normal room rate at 100 percent occupancy.
Unbelievable.
So it's a rocket.
Yeah?
Mr. Musk, can I ask the question?
Well --
You said on -- sorry.
if I may, sort of just, um, going through the president's comments, at the -- at a high level, you say well, what -- how -- how -- what -- what are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion? And it's really two things, competence and caring.
And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half. And -- and -- and I fully expect to be scrutinized and get you know, a daily proctology exam. Basically. I might as well just camp out there, um. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop.
Um, and -- but with the support of the president, we can -- we can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1. And then with deregulation because there's a lot of sort of regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good. We need to free -- free the builders of America to build. And if we do that, that means I think we can get the economic growth to be maybe 3 or 4 percent, maybe 5 percent.
And that means if you can get $1 trillion of economic growth and you can cut the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year, there is no inflation. There is no inflation in '26. And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So everyone's -- the mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, any -- their student debt, their monthly payments drop.
That's a fantastic scenario for the average American. I mean, imagine they are going down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same. And their -- and their -- their, you know, their mortgage, all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average American? That's what you're aiming for.
We had -- we had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open. It's not like complicated. [Laughter]
It's not complicated. It's a lot of work, yeah.
It's simple stuff. It's like -- you can't believe it. A lot of work. A lot of smart people involved, very, very smart people. But it's -- you're talking about anywhere maybe $500 billion. It's crazy the kind of numbers you're talking about.
It's really crazy.
You know, normally when you're looking at something you find -- you're looking for one out of 100. Here, you're almost reversing it. You look for one that's good.
Yeah.
And you can look at the title and you say why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? And the public gets it. You know, the public gets it. You've seen the polls.
[Inaudible]
The public is saying why are we paying all this money? This -- for years, this has gone on.
President Trump? Have you seen the Senator -- Mr. Musk --
Yeah, go ahead. Wait. Go ahead. Senator Rand Paul today said that DOGE cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress. Do you agree with that? Is that the plan? 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 it would be -- 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 -- if we do need a vote, I think we'd 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.
If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply with that order?
Well, I always abide by the courts. And 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.
Yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we'll appeal.
On the --
But appeals take a long time. And I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show them, here's a corrupt situation. We have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us to send this corrupt check to a person or do you want us not 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 taxpayer.
Yeah, 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 can all agree that if there's going to be a fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States and taking advantage of the federal government, especially in the entitlement programs are actually foreign fraud rings.
They're operating in other countries and actually exporting money to other countries. We should stop that.
Mr. Musk --
And this is big, big numbers, about $100 to $ 200 billion a year. Serious money.
Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact check this apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to protect them against HIV. So can you correct the statements that wasn't sent to Hamas? Actually it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there.
Yeah --
And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct, so we can trust what you're saying?
Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going about a thousand. I mean, any -- you know, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. Um, so, uh, you know, if the -- I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly.
I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. Um, and that is really an enormous number of condoms if you think about it. [Laughter] Um, but you know, if -- if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like OK, that's not as bad, but still, you know, why are we doing that? [Laughter]
Mr. Musk, how -- [Laughter] Can you talk a little bit about how closely you're working with agency heads as you're directing these cuts? Do they have the -- how much input do agency heads have when you're making these decisions?
Yeah, we work closely with the agency heads. Um and um, yeah, so -- so there is a -- there are sort of checks in place. So it's not just us just going in and doing things willy nilly. It's -- it's in, uh, partnership with the agency heads and uh, and I check frequently with the president to make sure that, you know, these are -- this is what the president wants to have happen.
So, you know, we talk almost every day and I -- you know, I double check things to make sure, is this something Mr. President, you wanted us to do this, we'll -- we'll -- then we'll do it.
USAID -- And how -- USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems starting in other countries that then come to -- to the United States?
Yeah, so that's an interesting example. So that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio. Um, and we have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention.
[Inaudible] you said?
Yes, correct. And -- and -- and we are -- we are moving fast. So we all make mistakes, but we also fix the mistakes very quickly. So --
So you see it as a a worthy cause, USAID?
I think that there are some worthy things. But -- but overall, if you say what is the bang for the buck, I would say it was not very good. Um, and there was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing -- influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand the light of day.
Mr. Musk -- Let me just ask a follow up to the Pentagon contracts. If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president is directing you to look into the Department of Defense, is that a conflict of interest?
Yes, we definitely need to do a -- are going to do with the president's request.
Does that present a conflict of interest for you?
Uh, no, because you'd have to look at the individual contract and say -- first of all, I'm not the one you know, filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX or someone that will be bidding for the contract. And I'd like to say if you see any contract where the -- where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know.
Because every one of them was.
, But the -- The president said the other day that you might look at Treasury's. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud -- or that question goes to both of you. What kind of fraud are you expecting to see or see or do you see right now in US Treasury's?
Yeah, I think you mean the Treasury Department as opposed to Treasury bills or --
You also referenced treasuries on Air Force One the other night, sir.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, the -- as I mentioned earlier, really the -- the first order of business is to make sure we're actually collecting -- sorry for this, I thought my son might -- might enjoy this, but it's -- he's sticking his fingers in my ears and stuff. Um, -- [Laughter] So it's a bit hard to hear sometimes. Hey, stop that.
[Laughter] Um, so, um, no, the stuff we're doing with -- with Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already.
God.
So -- so -- so, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that -- that when a payment goes out, it has to have a payment categorization code. It's like what type of payment is this? Um, you can't just leave the field blank. Currently, many payments, the field is left blank. And you have to describe what's the payment for, some basic rationalization.
That also is left blank. So this is why, you know, the Pentagon, when's the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? I mean, a decade ago maybe. Ever, really? Um, and we want to -- just in order to actually pass audits, you have to have financial information that allows you to trace the payments. Um, so uh, you know, and once in a while, the -- the Treasury has to -- it has to pause payments if it thinks the payment is going to a fraudulent organization.
Uh, like if the -- if a -- if a company or an organization is on a do not pay list, we should not pay it. I'm sure you would agree. Like it's quite hard to get on that payment -- do not pay list. It means that this is someone that is -- it's like dead people, terrorists, uh, known fraudsters, uh, that kind of thing.
We should not pay them. But currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that. [Laughter]
[Inaudible]
And by the way, hundreds, thousands of transactions like that. You know, we have a big team. And for the sake of the country, I hope that the person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are in charge are allowed to do the right thing, namely make sure everything's honest, legitimate and competent.
But we're looking at -- just when you look at USAID, that was -- that's one. We're going to look at the military. We're going to look at education. They're much bigger areas. But the USAID is really corrupt. I'll tell you, it's corrupt. It's incompetent and it's really corrupt. And I can't imagine a judge saying, well, it may be corrupt, but you don't have the right.
You got elected to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again. But you don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right that they're paying, or that things are honest that they're paying. And nobody can even believe this. Other people, law professors, they've been saying you can't -- how can you take that person's right away?
You're supposed to be running the country, but we're not allowed to look at who they're paying it to and what they're paying. We have massive amounts of fraud that we caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in what two weeks?
Yeah.
And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. And much -- as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it. And the only way we're going to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty sad for our country.
I don't understand how it could even work.
Sir, [Inaudible] program, can you personally guarantee that --
Which one?
The buyout program, the offer to federal workers, can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign now will be paid through September?
Well, they'll get their money, but they're getting a good deal. They're getting a big buyout. And what we're trying to do is reduce government. We have too many people. We have office space, it's occupied by foutr percent. Nobody's showing up to work because they were told not to. And then Biden gave him a five year pass, some of them, 48,000 of them gave him a five year pass, that for five years, you don't have to show up to work.
And -- and let me tell you this is largely much of this stuff is because of Biden. It's his fault. He allowed this country -- what he did on our border. What he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out. It's -- it's a very sad day when we look at it. I can't even believe it. But many contracts just extend and they just keep extending.
And there was nobody there to correct it. And that cannot be -- I can't imagine that could be held up by the court.
[Inaudible]
Any court that would say that the president or his representatives like Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, whatever, doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything's honest. I mean, how can you have a country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way.
You can have a country that way. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you.
Thank you, press. Thank you, press. [Inaudible]
I'm going to be back tonight. Mike Vogel will be at the White House tonight at about 10:00. If you want to come over, you can say hello to him, all right?
Did you guys get anything in return?
Not much. No, they were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually. I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people they lost, in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time.
We have got to stop that war. And I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those soldiers. And they're not American soldiers, they're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. But you're probably talking about a million and a half. I think -- I think we got to bring that one to an end.
OK? Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We're moving. Let's go. Let's move. Thank you. Quickly, guys.