Musk makes case for controversial DOGE cuts in 3-hour Rogan interview

Tech billionaire Elon Musk made the case for the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) cuts during a lengthy interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, defending the actions of the advisory board and labeling non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as “maybe the biggest scam ever."

Musk, who was tapped by President Trump to head DOGE but is not the board’s acting administrator, said during the three-hour talk with Rogan that the commission is still funding programs that “appear to be legitimate,” but a lot of those DOGE reviewed are not. 

The SpaceX executive described DOGE as the "first threat to bureaucracy.” He said that DOGE found $1.9 billion dispatched to inactive NGOs before they got the money, but did not share the name of the entities. 

"Many things that DOGE is fixing were identified by Government Accountability Office many years ago," Musk said during the episode that aired on Friday.  

The Tesla executive, who heads five other companies, touched on concerns from lawmakers and others that DOGE employees have access to sensitive information. The tech entrepreneur, who is a close Trump advisor, said the staffers are vetted like the rest of the federal government workers and posses the required security clearances. 

“Anyone from DOGE has to go through the same vetting process that those federal employees went through,” Musk said. 

He also told Rogan that DOGE recommends the cuts in the federal government, but those are ultimately performed by each agency or department. 

Musk and DOGE have gotten fierce pushback from legislators and challenges in court over their efforts to gut government agencies, slash funding and carry out mass layoffs of employees. They said DOGE’s actions are to bolster government efficiency, get rid of unnecessary regulation and expose fraud. 

The tech mogul went after the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s main outlet for distributing foreign assistance, whose 90 percent of foreign contracts were eliminated earlier this week.

Musk also hammered Social Security, arguing the program is riddled with fraud as people receive benefits long after they have passed away. 

“We found just with a basic search of the Social Security database that there were 20 million dead people marked as alive,” Musk said, telling Rogan that people were getting the funds, but he did not specify what percentage. 

The Associated Press (AP) reported in mid-February that Musk's claim that tens of millions of dead people over the age of 100 receiving Social Security checks was false. 

“The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits,” Social Security’s acting commissioner Lee Dudek said in a statement. 

But Musk doubled down on Friday.

“Basically, people are living way longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born, so you have more people who are retired and live for a long time and get retirement payments,” he said during the episode,” the tech mogul told Rogan.