About a week before Election Day 2024, Elon Musk appeared at a rally in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy and made a striking boast: In the Republican’s second term, the GOP megadonor said, he’d uncover ways to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget.
This was impossible to take seriously — the federal government’s entire discretionary budget is only about $1.8 trillion — and the world’s wealthiest individual is apparently coming to terms with this nagging detail. NBC News reported:
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday that his budget-cutting effort on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump would most likely not find $2 trillion in savings, backtracking on a goal he set earlier as co-head of a new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In an interview broadcast on the social media platform he owns, Musk said his original goal was more of a “best-case outcome.” He added, however, that he believes that there might still be a “good shot” at cutting $1 trillion, instead of $2 trillion.
At this point, let’s take a brief stroll down memory lane.
Four months ago, Trump shared a campaign pledge with voters: If elected to a second term, the Republican said, he’d appoint Musk to lead some kind of government “efficiency” panel that would focus on slashing federal investments.
To hear the then-candidate tell it, the endeavor would work miracles. The Musk-led commission, Trump boasted, would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars” and implement “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”
None of this made any sense — in part because Musk lacked any meaningful experience in auditing, federal budgeting or appropriations, and in part because cutting “trillions” from the federal budget is spectacularly unrealistic.
The GOP ticket prevailed anyway, and the president-elect launched the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”), to be led by Musk and failed White House hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. All the while, the party’s focus remained on $2 trillion in cuts.
Indeed, as recently as mid-December, Trump not only said that Musk would find $2 trillion in cuts, he added that these cuts would “have no impact” on the American public, which was utterly bizarre given that $2 trillion in cuts would require, as The New York Times put it, “shutting down almost the entire federal government.”
Some congressional Republicans appeared only too pleased to play along. Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia, for example, appeared on Fox Business and declared, in reference to the $2 trillion figure, “It can be done.”
Carter, a member of the House Budget Committee, should’ve known better. Now, evidently, Musk does know better.
All of this is notable because Trump’s operation is already backing off prominent campaign promises, even before Inauguration Day, and the hype surrounding the “DOGE” initiative is already unraveling.
Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, an MSNBC contributor, spoke to a senior Republican aide last month who described Musk and Ramaswamy as “two people who know nothing about how the government works pretending they can cut a trillion dollars.” The same aide predicted that the entire endeavor will likely end in “disaster.”
As Musk publicly rejects one of Trump’s most unrealistic goals, it’s worth keeping that quote in mind.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
