WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump stated in remarks aired on Sunday that Elon Musk, who is overseeing a purge of U.S. government jobs, will help uncover “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” in federal agencies.
In a Fox News interview set to air before the Super Bowl football championship, Trump said the American people “want me to find” waste and that Musk, the world’s richest man and leader of the president’s cost-cutting efforts, has been “a great help” in rooting out unnecessary spending.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said in interview excerpts released by Fox.
Over the past three weeks in office, Trump has unleashed a flurry of executive orders aimed at slashing federal spending. He appointed SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk to lead the federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
However, while the administration has highlighted several government projects that Trump believes should be ended or curtailed, evidence of widespread illegal fraud has not been presented.
Musk, a top Trump donor and ally, has already taken unprecedented steps to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), laying off thousands of employees. The DOGE reform team has also raised alarm among critics by gaining access through the U.S. Treasury to the personal and financial data of millions of Americans.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered a temporary pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave. A day later, another U.S. judge issued an emergency order blocking DOGE from accessing Treasury Department payment systems that contain Americans’ sensitive data.
In his interview, Trump said that over the next day or so, he will order Musk to turn his government scalpel to the Department of Education, a frequent target of Republican ire.
“Then I’m going to go to the military,” Trump said, reiterating his call for a review of spending at the Pentagon, whose budget totals around $850 billion.
Musk’s role has faced criticism in part because his companies have had billions of dollars in contracts with the U.S. government – more than $20 billion, according to House Democrat Mark Pocan.
