Tesla billionaire Elon Musk sat down with Larry Kudlow, the former Trump economic advisor, on Fox Business Monday to discuss his work at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Kudlow asked Musk some procedural questions to kick things off, like how big is his team at DOGE and where is recruiting from.
“Basically it’s software people. And, you know, information security software people and finance. Yeah. It’s basically yeah. Finance and technology. And I mean, frankly, I can’t believe I’m here doing this,” Musk replied, adding:
It’s kind of bizarre, but, I kind of think that the, you know, we’ve got this enormous federal budget deficit and it’s a $2 trillion deficit. It keeps growing. Our interest payments are higher than our Defense Department budget.That’s I think the real wakeup call for me was looking at that, seeing that the interest payments to the national debt, exceeded the Defense Department budget. And that was only growing over time. Which meant if we didn’t do something about this, then there won’t be any money for anything. We’ll just be servicing debt.
“And you know how to read an income statement and you know how to read a balance sheet. You’ve had some business experience. I’m kidding. But yeah, you know that on this stuff,” Kudlow added.
“Yeah. I mean, really, I just don&
“So it’s a call to action. You’re hearing a call to action,” Kudlow replied.
“Yeah,” said Musk.
“You have given up your other stuff. I mean, what do you– how are you running your other businesses?” Kudlow followed up.
“With great difficulty,” Musk said before a long pause.
“Yeah. I mean,” Musk said again pausing. Tesla stock dropped some 15 percent on Monday as worries about Musk’s leadership roiled investors.
“But there’s no turning back, you’re saying,” Kudlow offered.
“I’m just here trying to make government more efficient. Eliminate waste and fraud and– So far we’re making good progress actually. So our savings at this point exceed $4 billion a day. So it’s pretty significant,” Musk said.
“You think you wind up getting to $1 trillion?” Kuldow asked.
“Yeah,” Musk replied, adding, “I mean, unless someone unless we’re unless we’re stopped, will we will get to $1 trillion of savings.”
Watch the clip above via Fox Business.