Musk defends DOGE, blasts Social Security in marathon Rogan appearance

Elon Musk sat down with podcaster Joe Rogan for his first interview since taking the helm of President Trump’s efficiency apparatus for a marathon back-and-forth where he defended taking a chainsaw to the federal government. 

Mr. Musk’s return to “The Joe Rogan Experience” for a roughly three-hour interview comes as his Department of Government Efficiency has drawn heavy criticism and multiple lawsuits for its slash-and-burn tactics across a growing number of government agencies. 

Mr. Musk, who runs multiple companies including SpaceX, Tesla and X, said that the reason he is putting so much effort into the DOGE initiative was that the country’s finances were in a “dire situation” and that “America is going bankrupt.” 

On its website, DOGE has listed roughly $65 billion in savings so far.

The tech-billionaire envisioned DOGE as being a disruptive force in federal bureaucracy, likening it to a revolution that “might actually succeed.” 

“The reality is that our elected officials have very, very little power relative to the bureaucracy until DOGE,” Mr. Musk said. “So DOGE is a threat to the bureaucracy. It’s the first threat to the bureaucracy, and normally, the bureaucracy eats revolutions for breakfast.”

Mr. Musk levied strong criticism against the Social Security Administration and called it “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Last year, a report found that the program would run out of money within the next 10 years. 

He contended that the entitlement program put the government in financial jeopardy and that “however bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it’ll be much worse in the future.” 

“Basically, people are living way longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born, so you have more people who are retired and live for a long time and get retirement payments,” Mr. Musk said.

DOGE’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development was quickly broached, and Mr. Musk contended that non-governmental organizations, like the ones that USAID funded, were “maybe the biggest scam ever.”

Still, he said that the efficiency machine would allow money to flow to avenues that appeared “to be legitimate,” but couched that sentiment when he argued that most of the ventures he had seen, particularly under USAID, were not.

“It could be the kind of thing where you sort of fund Ebola prevention, but it turns out that actually you’re funding a lab that develops new Ebola,” Mr. Musk said. “They claim it’s Ebola prevention, but it’s actually Ebola creation.”

Mr. Musk later said that cuts from DOGE are prompted as suggestions that ultimately agency heads have to sign off on.

He also addressed concerns over DOGE employees’ access to sensitive taxpayer information, arguing that his workers have to go through the same vetting process as federal employees who also have access to the same information.

“There’s not like some unvetted random situation,” he said. “For example, if there’s a security clearance needed, the DOGE person has to have that same security clearance, so there’s no reduction in security.”