Elon Musk says he 'got carried away' in politics, defends DOGE

Elon Musk said he got 'carried away' and a 'little too involved in politics' during his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. But he says he stands by the department's work. He made the comments during a wide-ranging interview with The Economist's 'Insider,' hosted by Zanny Minton Beddoes. 'I think I got a little too involved in politics,' Musk said. 'Got carried away, frankly.' DOGE was initially created in the early months of Trump's second term. At the time, Musk said the agency would cut upwards of $2 trillion from the national deficit within one year. As its first anniversary neared, DOGE's own calculations tabulated savings of $214 billion -- less than a quarter of its most conservative promises. Much of that money -- $28.3 billion -- came from cuts to the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. Musk denied that those cuts led to 'unnecessary suffering,' as Beddoes described it, calling reports of child deaths due to dismantled programs that got their funding from USAID 'nonsense.' Impact Counter, a statistical tracker developed by Dr. Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease mathematical modeler and health economist, documented more than 780,000 deaths within the first year of cuts to USAID programs, including more than 518,000 children. Musk maintained that the organizations that had their funding cut were operating fraudulently, before reiterating that 'zero people died because of DOGE.' Asked whether he still supports the administration, Musk said he's 'not going to agree with everything any administration does,' but that 'on balance,' Trump's team is doing 'excellent.'