US could go 'bankrupt' without DOGE, says Musk as he takes prime spot at Trump's first Cabinet meeting

Elon Musk and Donald Trump at the first Cabinet meeting. (Image: Reuters)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), attended the first Cabinet meeting of Trump's second term.

As tensions between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries simmered, Donald Trump asked Musk to deliver a summary of DOGE’s work thus far, as the department has come under increasing scrutiny, including by congressional Republicans.

Musk, wearing a black 'Make America Great Again (MAGA)' hat and a black T-shirt with the phrase “Tech Support,” said that the shirt was a “literal description” of the work of the DOGE team — “helping fix the government computer systems.”

“Because this is actually – as crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that the DOGE team is doing is helping fix the government computer systems. Many of these systems are extremely old. They don’t communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. The software doesn’t work. So, we are actually tech support. It’s ironic, but it’s true," he said, before explaining the overall goal of the DOGE team.

Also Read: Trump orders more layoffs, Musk touts cuts at cabinet meeting

He said that the overall goal of DOGE is to help address the deficit, which he said if not done, “America will go bankrupt".

BREAKING: Elon Musk Delivers Remarks at the First Official Trump Cabinet Meeting "I consider myself humble tech support. It is not optional to balance this budget, is it essential. I'm receiving a lot of death threats, I could stack them up. I believe we can actually find a pic.twitter.com/JbVRe3FZSF
Autism Capital (@AutismCapital) February 26, 2025

“We simply cannot sustain as a country $2 trillion deficits. Just the interest on the national debt now exceeds the Defense Department’s spending. … If this continues, the country will become de facto bankrupt,” Musk explained, adding that he’s received a lot of “flak” and death threats for his work. “DOGE is a support function for the president and for the agencies and departments to help achieve those savings and find 15 percent in reduction in fraud and waste.”

"But if we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt, that’s why it has to be done. And I’m confident at this point ... that we can actually find a trillion dollars in savings. That would be roughly 15% of the $7 trillion budget," Musk said.

Musk said DOGE will make mistakes. He acknowledged that his team would make mistakes in the course of its work but said he would work to remedy them quickly, providing an example of freezing funding at USAID for Ebola prevention before restoring it with “no interruption.”

Trump shares spotlight

Trump, not one to easily share the spotlight, seemed happy to turn the top of the hour-plus meeting over to Musk for a “little summary” of what the Department of Government Efficiency has been up to, saying that Musk's team had found evidence of “horrible things” afoot in the government.

“He's sacrificing a lot,” Trump said of Musk, referencing the time the world's richest man is taking away from his many business ventures. “He's also getting hit."

Musk took a star role at the cabinet meeting to discuss his ambitious budget-cutting targets as Trump ordered federal agencies to undertake more large-scale layoffs of workers.

Musk on Federal firing

The Tesla CEO, for his part, said his lightning-fast efforts to right-size the government had drawn death threats and he jokingly knocked his fist on his “wooden head” as he said he hoped to find $1 trillion to trim from the federal budget, an effort that has caused extensive disruption among federal workers and those who rely on their services.

Musk defended his weekend attempt to require government workers to justify their prior week’s work under penalty of termination — a move that drew pushback from many in the room on national security and privacy grounds — as merely a “pulse check” to ensure that those working for the government have “a pulse and two neurons," adding that “this is not a high bar” for workers to meet.

Speculating that some workers are either dead or fictional, Musk added that the goal was to see that workers are real, alive and can "write an email."

(With inputs from agencies)