Top Trump Official Throws Elon Musk Under the Bus: He Got DOGE ‘Backward’

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick threw former DOGE head Elon Musk under the bus during a recent interview with Axios’s Mike Allen.

“What’s your current thinking about DOGE, now that Elon Musk is gone from the White House?” Allen asked Lutnick during their conversation.

“I thought Elon got caught up in other people’s objectives, right? I mean, the people who work at the government-, fine, the government, I’m sure, could be 10% smaller, I’m sure it could be 15% smaller. Let the cabinet secretaries go in, study their place, and make the proper cuts,” answered Lutnick.

“So he was hasty and overbearing?” followed up Allen.

“Well, I wouldn’t say hasty and overbearing. The Twitter, his Twitter example, where he was able to cut 80% of the people out, right? He thought that example worked for government. And my view was that the real money of government is the spending, and the waste, fraud, and abuse of government,” replied Lutnick. “I mean, think about this building. We, the Biden crowd before me, had sent $7.4 billion to some brand new, make believe not-for-profit to give out money, 7.4 billion should be wired out of the Department of Commerce to this thing called Natcast, which didn’t exist, which was made up as some not-for-profit, staffed with all these Biden officials and then trying to get 7.4 billion out. That’s what I call waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“We ended it, we kept it in the government, but you know, that’s how you make big money. You know how many people would equal $7.4 billion? Come on, the focus should have been on cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse — and the people you could do over time. I thought he got that backward,” concluded Lutnick.

Musk was among the most passionate and high-profile supporters of President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Their bromance carried into the early months of Trump’s second term, but unraveled quickly after Musk left the administration.