Donald Trump backs Elon Musk as cost-cutting drive spreads across Government

President Donald Trump's statement Friday that he had directed Elon Musk to turn his budget-slashing initiative on the Pentagon underscored Musk's rapidly expanding role in their charge to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

At a White House news conference, Trump said Musk would also be examining the Education Department. It is one more corner of the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, now under the scrutiny of the band of young and inexperienced operatives under Musk's direction.

In the first three weeks of the new administration, Musk's cost-cutting team has swiftly inserted itself into at least 17 federal agencies, according to a tally by The New York Times.


Musk and Trump have defended the disruptive actions of Musk's young aides, even as some have come under scrutiny.

One aide, Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former employee of Musk's social platform X, resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal revealed that he had made racist posts on that site. On Friday, Musk called for the Journal reporter to be fired and said he was reinstating Elez, a move that both the president and vice president said they supported.

Asked at the news conference if there was anything in the federal government that Musk had been told not to touch with his cost-cutting effort, Trump replied: "Well, we haven't discussed that much." He added: "I guess maybe you could say some high intelligence or something. And I'll do that myself if I have to."

Otherwise, Trump said Musk would be reviewing "just about everything."

Sending Musk into the Pentagon, the department with the single biggest discretionary budget, creates a clear conflict of interest: The Defense Department has billions of dollars in contracts with Musk through SpaceX and other companies he owns.

The Defense Department relies on Musk to get most of its satellites into orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.

Trump had said earlier that he would be mindful of any conflicts of interest posed by Musk's vast business holdings. "If there's a conflict," Trump said this week, "then we won't let him get near it." But Friday he praised Musk's operation, saying that so far the office had identified massive amounts of waste and fraud.