The Trump White House is quietly ratcheting down expectations of DOGE, the Elon Musk-led effort to save trillions of dollars for taxpayers by eliminating government waste, duplication and transgender dance festivals in Bangladesh, On The Money has learned.
Instead of the $2 trillion in cuts over the next decade that Musk recently touted at a Wall Street conference, the chatter inside Team Trump is that they think the Department of Government Efficiency can reduce waste by $500 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Which is still something even when you consider the dimensions of the problem at hand: a $2 trillion federal deficit on a budget of $6.7 trillion, along with debt that is $37 trillion and counting.
Musk, of course, has generated a lot of buzz running DOGE. It’s a cute double entendre since it’s the name of a meme coin Musk once touted because, well, he’s Musk and he likes to do crazy stuff like pay $44 billion for Twitter – about $40 billion more than it was worth at the time of sale. In just its first month, the Trump White House says that DOGE has saved taxpayers around $65 billion, which seems like a good start.
But there are skeptics on just how much Musk is saving if anything. Progressive bureaucrats are suing to stop him, arguing it’s an abuse of power that the world’s richest man is acting as if he’s the president by cutting whole departments and civil service jobs.
And as we’ve pointed out on these pages, many investors in his EV company, Tesla, consider DOGE an ill-advised sabbatical for Musk as he hangs in the White House with his new BFF, President Trump. Musk is having too much fun uncovering all those examples of government waste and posting them on Twitter (which he renamed “X” for reasons no one can figure out) – while Tesla shares tank.
There’s also talk that the Trump-Musk bromance will end any day now because Musk is too much a publicity hound and Trump, the former reality TV star, always wants to be the center of attention.
My sources provide a different perspective. They are seasoned GOP Wall Street types with ties to various White House administrations and members of Congress, and now Team Trump. They admit Trump can be unpredictable – so can Elon as most people know – but things are running pretty smoothly between the two.
Trump, they say, appreciates what Musk brings to the table; as of the writing of this newsletter, their relationship remains solid. Plus, they say, DOGE has the potential to save some real money down the line. The crazy stuff like trans dance festivals and condoms for Gaza gets the attention, but Musk has been laying the groundwork not just to cut various types of weird foreign aid, but big-ticket entitlements.
And the public is on the side of DOGE. The betting inside Team Trump is that most taxpayers love the idea that the world’s richest man has their back when it comes to stopping the government from wasting their money, even if he’s cutting a bunch of civil service jobs in suburban Virginia.
That’s why my sources think the Trump-Musk alliance will remain strong and $500 billion in savings is a realistic estimate because the president will eventually apply DOGE to fraud and abuse in Medicaid, Social Security, defense spending and more.
It may not initially meet Musk’ $2 trillion in savings humblebrag, but the American people will take it.
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