Dawn
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10:54 Dec 10, 2025
US President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency was only “a little bit successful”, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on a podcast on Tuesday, adding that he would not lead the project again. The billionaire, who is founder of electric car company Tesla, was a major donor to Trump’s presidential election campaign and became a close ally and adviser to his administration. Musk led the DOGE team in seeking to slash the federal government’s budget and workforce in the first five months of Trump’s second term. But the role and his political rhetoric sparked a backlash against him and Tesla, including vandalism of Tesla cars. “I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies. And they wouldn’t have been burning the cars,” Musk said on the podcast with former Trump administration official Katie Miller. “We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful. We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful,” Musk said. Asked if he would ...