Remarks on Signing an Executive Order Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Workforce Optimization Initiative and an Exchange with Reporters

White House Senior Adviser Elon R. Musk. Hello, everyone.

The President. Hello, everybody.

Senior Adviser Musk. [Laughter] Fancy meeting you here. [Laughter] You come here often? [Laughter]

The President. X, are you okay? [Laughter] This is—this is X, and he's a great guy, high IQ. He's a high-IQ individual.

Senior Adviser Musk. And he's got this—check out this cool chain he's got. [Laughter]

The President. So, thank you very much. We had a busy day today. The King just left, and we—we've had a great discussion—terrific discussion concerning Gaza and everything else.

We had discussions also about Saturday at 12 o'clock. It's going to be a big moment. We'll see what happens. I don't expect much happening with these people, but we'll see what happens.

And we're going to be signing a very important deal today. It's DOGE. And I'm going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the things that we've found, which is shocking: billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse. And I think it's very important.

And that's one of the reasons I got elected. I said we're going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick, and that corrupt. And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars' worth—much more than that—in just a short period of time. And we want to weed out the corruption, and it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, "We don't want you to do that."

Well, so, maybe we have to look at the judges, because that's very serious. I think it's a very serious violation.

I'll ask Elon Musk to say a few words, and we'll take some questions.

Elon, go ahead.

Senior Adviser Musk. Sure.

So, the—at a—high level, if you say, "What is the goal of DOGE" or—and, I think, a significant part of this Presidency is to restore democracy. This may seem—like, "Well, aren't we in a democracy?" Well, if you don't have a feedback loop—

X Æ A-Xii Musk. [Inaudible]

Senior Adviser Musk. Okay, X—we'd have to—if you—[laughter]. Sorry. I tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes. [Laughter]

So, if—there's not a good feedback loop from the people to—the Government and—if you have rule of—the bureaucrat—or if the bureaucracy is in charge and—then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the President and—the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.

So, it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop, and that the public—the public's elected representatives—the President, the House, and the Senate—decide what happens, as opposed to an—a large unelected bureaucracy.

[Senior Adviser Musk continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

So, what—what I really want to say is, like, it's not optional for us—to reduce the Federal expenses; it's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country, and it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.

The President. And, also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about $30 million, et cetera?

Senior Adviser Musk. Right. Well, we—are—we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there—are quite a few people in—the bureaucracy who—have, ostensibly, a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars of net worth while they are in that position, which is—[laughter]—you know, what—what happened at USAID. We're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps. But just—there seems to be—mysteriously, they get wealthy. We don't—why? Where does it come from?

And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at the taxpayer expense. That's— the—that's the honest truth of it.

[Senior Adviser Musk continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

So, anyway. So, I think—you know, that's an example—like, at a high level, if you could say, like, how do we increase prosperity, is we get people to do—to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles. And so, you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's—that's the actual goal.

Everyone is very quiet, by the way. Is it—are people normally this quiet? [Laughter]

Q. Your—detractors, Mr. Musk——

Senior Adviser Musk. I have—what?

Q. ——including a lot of Democrats—

Senior Adviser Musk. I have detractors?

Q. You do, sir.

Senior Adviser Musk. I don't believe it.

Q. ——say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of Government and doing it in a nontransparent way. What's your response to that criticism?

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted, you know, that we—have a majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. We won the House. We won the Senate.

The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was—on the campaign, the President spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major Government reform, and that's what people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for.

And—a lot of times, you know, people—they don't get what they voted for. But in this Presidency, they are going to get what they voted for, and that's what democracy is all about.

Q. Mr. Musk, the White House says——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

Q. ——that you will identify and excuse yourself——

Q. I have one more.

Q. ——from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, we—actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions—we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions we are—maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been—I can't—I don't know of a case that—where—an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.

And—so—you know, and—the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very— simple and basic. They're—not—we're—you know, what I mentioned, for—example, about Treasury just making sure that—payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out is —categorized correctly, that the—the payment is explained, that organizations on the Do Not Pay list, which are—it takes a lot to get there—they actually are not paid, which currently they are paid.

These—are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well.

So, it's got nothing to do with, like, say, a contract with some company of mine at all.

Government Ethics/Efficiency Efforts

Q. But if there is a conflict in—of interest when it comes to you, yourself—for instance, you've received billions of dollars in Federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the President, I know, has directed you to look into——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

Q. ——are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, all of our actions are—are fully public. So, if you see anything—you say, like: "Wait a second. Hey, Elon, that doesn't—that seems like maybe that's—you know, there's a conflict there." It's—it's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately. You know?

Q. Including you, yourself, right?

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes. But it's what—transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust. So, not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency so you can see everything that's going on. And then you can see am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not. It's totally obvious.

Q. But——

The President. And if we thought that, we would not let him do that segment or look in that area—if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watch that also.

He's——

Q. [Inaudible]

The President. He's a big businessman. He's a successful guy. That's why we want him doing this. We don't want a—an unsuccessful guy doing this.

Now, one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments. They're ridiculous, and we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse. I would say those two words, as opposed to the third word that I usually use. But in this case, fraud and abuse. It's abusive because most of these things are virtually made-up or, certainly, money shouldn't be sent to them. And you know what I'm talking about. It's crazy. So—but we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found.

And now a judge, who is an activist judge, wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this. I campaigned on the fact that I said Government is corrupt, and it is very corrupt. It's very, very—it's also foolish.

As an example, a man has a contract for 3 months, and the contract ends, but they keep paying them for the next 20 years. You know, because——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. ——nobody ends a contract. You get a lot of that.

You have a contract that's a 3—a 3-month contract. Now, normally, if you're in a small—it's—and, in all fairness, it's—the size of this thing is so big.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. But if you have—a contract and you're in a regular business, you end the contract in 3 months. You know it's a consultant. Here's a contract for 3 months. But it goes on for 20 years, and the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month.

And you have various things like that and even much worse than that—actually much worse. And I guess you call that incompetence, maybe.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. It could be corruption. It could be a deal is made on both sides, you know, where a guy gets some money, he kicks—I think there is a lot of kickback here.

Senior Adviser Musk. There is.

The President. I see a lot of kickback here.

Senior Adviser Musk. There's a lot of kickbacks.

The President. A tremendous kickback, because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes. [Laughter]

The President. ——so he has to get a kickback.

So, that's what I got elected for—that and borders and military and a lot of things, but this is a big part of it, and I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do. We got elected to—to, among other things, find all of this fraud and abuse, all of this—this horrible stuff going on.

And we've already found billions of dollars—not, like, a little bit—billions—many billions of dollars. And when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to a trillion dollars.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. It could be close to a trillion dollars that we're going to find. That will have a—quite an impact on the budget.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. And—you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge, and he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings, and he wants us to stop looking. How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it.

We have a case in New York, where a hotel is paid $59 million—$59 million—because of—because it's housing migrants—illegal migrants—

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. ——all illegal, I believe.

Senior Adviser Musk. And they—were being paid twice the normal room rate at—

The President. Yes.

Senior Adviser Musk. ——100 percent occupancy.

The President. Unbelievable.

X Musk. [Inaudible]

Senior Adviser Musk. So, it's a racket.

The President. Right. Yes.

Q. Mr. Musk, can I ask you a question? You said——

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, if——

Q. Sorry.

Senior Adviser Musk. ——if I may, sort of, just going from the President's comments, at a—at a high level, okay, well, what—how exactly—how do—how—what—are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion? And it's really two things: competence and caring. And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half.

And—I fully expect to be scrutinized and get, you know, a daily proctology exam, basically. You might as well just camp out there. So, it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop.

And—but with the support of the President, we can—we can cut the budget deficit in half from 2 trillion to 1.

And then with deregulation—because there's a lot of, sort of, regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good—we need to free—the builders of America to build. And if we do that, that means, I think, you can get the economic growth to be maybe 3, 4 percent, maybe 5 percent. And that means, if you can get a trillion dollars of economic growth and you can cut the budget deficit by a trillion, between now and next year, there is no inflation. There's no inflation in '26.

And if the Government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So, everyone's—the mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, anything—their— student debt, the—their monthly payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the average American.

I mean, imagine they—they're going down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same, and their—you know, their mortgage, all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average American?

The President. We had no idea—

[At this point, several reporters began asking questions at once.]

We had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open. It's—not, like, complicated. It's simple stuff.

Senior Adviser Musk. It's not that complicated. [Laughter]

The President. It's like——

Senior Adviser Musk. Just a lot of work, yes.

The President. ——we can't believe it. A lot of work, a lot of smart people involved—very, very smart people.

But it's—you're talking about anywhere—maybe $500 billion. It's crazy, the kind of numbers you're talking about.

Senior Adviser Musk. It is really crazy.

The President. You know, normally, when you're looking at something, you'll find—you're looking for 1 out of 100. Here you're almost reversing it. You look for one that's good.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. And you can look at the title, and you say, "Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that?"

And the public gets it. You know, the public gets it. You've seen the polls. The public is saying, "Why are we paying all this money?" This—for years, this has gone on.

Q. Mr. Musk, you said that—[inaudible]——

Q. President Trump, Senator——

The President. Yes, go ahead.

Wait.

Go ahead.

U.S. DOGE Service

Q. Senator Rand Paul today said that DOGE cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress. Do you agree with that? Is that the plan?

The President. I—really don't know. I know this: We're finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse——

Senior Adviser Musk. [Laughter] Yes.

The President. ——it'd be—I—it's fine with me. I think we'll get the vote. Although, there'll be some people that wouldn't vote.

And how could a judge want to hold us back from finding all of this fraud and finding all of this incompetence? Why would that happen? Why would, even, Congress want to do that? No, Congress—if—if we do need a vote, I think we'd get a very easy vote because we have a track record now.

We've already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence, and corruption.

Q. If a——

The President. Lot of corruption.

Q. If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply with that order?

The President. Well, I always abide by the courts, and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what—he's done is he's slowed down the momentum, and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books.

You know, if a person is crooked and they get caught, other people see that, and, all of a sudden, it becomes harder later on. So—

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. Yes, the answer is: I always abide by the courts—always abide by them—and we'll appeal.

Q. On the buy——

The President. But appeals take a long time, and I would——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. ——hope that a judge—if you go in to a judge and you show them: "Here's a corrupt situation. We have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us to send this"——

Senior Adviser Musk. [Laughter] Yes. Exactly.

The President. ——"corrupt check to a person, or do you want us not to give it and give it back to the taxpayer?" I would hope a judge would say: "Don't send it. Give it back to the taxpayer."

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes. If I can add to that—what we're finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So, I think we can all agree that if there's going to be fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in— the United States and taking advantage of the Federal Government—especially in the entitlements programs—are actually foreign fraud rings. They're operating in other countries and actually exporting money to other countries. We should stop that. [Laughter]

Q. Mr. Musk, you said——

Senior Adviser Musk. And this is big—we're—big numbers. We're at $100 to $200 billion a year. Serious money.

Q. Mr. Musk, you said on X——

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

Q. ——that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact-check this, it—apparently, Gaza in Mozambique, and the program was to protect them against HIV. So, can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent to Hamas, actually. It was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms were sent there.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

Q. And how can—we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and—and should be corrected. So, nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, any—you know, we're going to—we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.

So, you know, if—the—I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million worth of condoms to anywhere, frankly. I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. And that—that is really an enormous number of condoms, if you think about it. [Laughter]

But, you know, if—it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, okay, that's not as bad, but still, you know, why are we doing that? [Laughter]

Q. Mr. Musk, how—can you talk a little bit about how closely you're working with agency heads as you're directing these cuts? Do they have the—how much input do agency heads have when you're making these decisions?

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes. We work closely with the agency heads, and—yes. So—but there—there is a—there are sort of checks in place. So, it's not—us just going in and doing things willy-nilly. It's—it's in partnership with the agency heads. And I know I check frequently with the President to make sure that, you know, these—this—is what the President wants to have happen.

So, you know, we—talk almost every day, and I—you know, I double-check things to make sure: "Is this something—Mr. President, you wanted us to do this?" Well—, then we'll do it.

Q. USAI—USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems—

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

Q. ——starting in other countries that then come to—the United States?

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes. So, that's an interesting example. So, that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio. And we have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV—prevention.

Q. You left that, you said?

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes, correct. And—we are—we are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we will also fix the mistakes very quickly. So——

Q. Do you see it as a worthy cause, USAID?

Senior Adviser Musk. I—I think that there's some worthy things, but—but overall, if you say, "What is the bang for the buck," I would say it's—it was not very good. And there was—far too much of what USA—AID was do-—doing was—influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand to light of day.

Q. If I could just ask a follow-up to the—the Pentagon contracts. If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon, and the President is directing you to look into the Department of Defense—

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes, which we definitely need to do and——

Q. ——is that a conflict of interest?

Senior Adviser Musk. ——are going to do at—at the President's request.

Q. Does that present a conflict of interest for you?

Senior Adviser Musk. No, because you'd have to look at the individual contract and say—first of all, I'm—not the one, you know, filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX or someone who will be bidding for the contract.

And I'd like to say, if—if you see any contract where the—where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.

Government Payment Systems

Q. The President said the other day that you might look at treasuries. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud or—and that question goes to both of you—what kind of fraud are you expecting to see or do you see right now in U.S. treasuries?

Senior Adviser Musk. I think you mean the—the Treasury Department, as opposed to treasury bills or——

Q. You also referenced treasuries on Air Force One the other night, sir.

The President. Yes.

Go ahead.

Senior Adviser Musk. Well, the—as I mentioned earlier, really, the—the first order of business is to make sure we're actually collecting—sorry for this—[laughter]—I thought my son might—might enjoy this, but he's—he's sticking his fingers in my ears and stuff. [Laughter] So, it's been hard to hear sometimes.

Hey, stop that. [Laughter]

So, no, the—the stuff we're doing with—with Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already. So—[laughter]—so, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that—that when a payment goes out, it has to have the—a payment categorization code. It's like what type of payment is this. You can't just leave the field blank. Currently, many payments, the field is left blank. —and you have to describe what's the payment for—some basic rationalization. That also is left blank.

So, this is why, you know, the Pentagon—when is the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? I mean, a decade ago, maybe? I don't—ever? Really? And we want to—just in order to actually pass audits, you have to have financial information that allows you to trace the payments.

So—you know, and—and once in a while, the—the Treasury has to—has to pause payments if it thinks the payment is going to a fraudulent organization. Like, if a—if—a company or organization is on a Do Not Pay list, we should not pay it. I'm sure you would agree. Like, it's quite hard to get on that payment—the Do Not Pay list. It means that this is someone that is just—it's, like, dead people, terrorists, known fraudsters, that kind of thing. We should not pay them. But currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that. [Laughter]

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. Many, many transactions.

Q. Just——

The President. And, by the way, hundreds, thousands of transactions like that. You know, we have a big team, and for the sake of the country, I hope that the person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are in charge are allowed to do the right thing—namely, make sure everything's honest, legitimate, and competent.

But we're looking at just—when you look at USAID, that was—that's one. We're going to look at the military. We're going to look at Education. They're much bigger areas. But the USAID is really corrupt. I'll tell you, it's corrupt. It's incompetent, and it's really corrupt.

And I can't imagine a judge saying: "Well, it may be corrupt, but you don't have the right. You got elected to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again, but you don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right that they're paying or that things are honest that they're paying."

And nobody can even believe this. Other people, law professors, they've been saying, "Can't—how can you take that person's right away? He's supposed to be running the country, but we're not allowed to look at who they're paying it to and what they're paying?"

We have massive amounts of fraud that we caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in—what?—2 weeks.

Senior Adviser Musk. Yes.

The President. And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. And much—as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it, and the only way you're going to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say, "You're not allowed to look for it," that's pretty sad for our country. I don't understand how it could even work.

Federal Workforce Reduction Efforts

Q. On the buyout program. Can you personally guarantee that——

The President. Which one?

Q. The buyout program, the offer to Federal workers. Can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign now will be paid through September?

The President. Well, they'll get their money, but they're getting a good deal. They're getting a big buyout. And what we're trying to do is reduce government. We have too many people. We have office space. It's occupied by 4 percent. Nobody showing up to work because they were told not to. And then Biden gave them a 5-year pass, some of them—48,000 of them—gave them a 5-year pass that, for 5 years, you don't have to show up to work.

And—and let me tell you, this is largely—much of this stuff is because of Biden. It's his fault. He allowed this country—what he did on our border—what he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out.

It's—it's a very sad day when we look at it. I can't even believe it. But many contracts just extend, and they just keep extending, and there was nobody there to correct it. And that—that cannot be—I can't imagine that could be held up by the court.

Any court that would say that the President or his representatives, like Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, whatever, doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything's honest—I mean, how can you have a country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way. You can't have a country that way.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Release of U.S. Citizen Marc H. Fogel From Russian Detention

White House Aide. Thank you, Press. Thank you.

Q. On Marc Fogel. On Marc Fogel.

Q. On Marc Fogel.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. Yes. He's coming back tonight.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Marc Fogel will be at the White House tonight at about 10 o'clock. If you want to come over, you can say hello to him. All right?

Q. Did the U.S. give anything in return?

The President. Not much. No, they were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually. I hope that's the beginning of a—relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people. They lost, in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time.

We got to stop that war, and I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of debt. We're losing all those soldiers. And they're not American soldiers; they're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. But you're probably talking about a million and a half. I think—I think we've got to bring that one to an end.

Okay? Thank you.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Ten o'clock—10 o'clock tonight at the White House.

Q. Thank you, sir.

The President. Thank you. See you later.