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Donald Trump has said he wants to raise the amount spent on the U.S. military, even as “First Buddy” Elon Musk continues his crusade to slash federal spending by trillions of dollars.
“We want to raise defense spending. I think we have to have it,” the president said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, which was broadcast Monday. He also vowed that DOGE would “check the military.”
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse, and the people elected me on that,” he said.
Trump added that he may place less emphasis on military budgets in the future, saying he plans to talk to Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin about curbing defense spending.
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“One of the things I’ll be doing with President Xi and with Putin and everybody else is saying, let’s ease up on all this, you know, building all of this, you know, the bombs,” he said, calling it “crazy” to spend large amounts of money on weapons that may not be used.
Military spending accounted for around $824 billion in 2024, almost half of U.S. discretionary spending, and an increase of almost $27 billion from 2023. According to data compiled by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the U.S. spends more on defense than the next nine largest countries combined.
Musk has previously been critical of many Pentagon efforts, calling for some weapons programs to be “completely redone” and for “immediate and dramatic changes.”
However, on Tuesday, newly confirmed U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth played down concerns over a pending audit by Musk and, like, Trump hoped for an increase in military spending.
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Speaking in Germany during his first trip overseas, Hegseth said he had already been in touch with Musk and expressed confidence in the effort to find billions in cost-cutting and to make the Pentagon more efficient.
“There’s plenty of places (at the Pentagon) where we want the keen eye of DOGE, but we’ll do it in coordination,” Hegseth said, referring to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities.”
At a minimum, Hegseth said, the U.S. defense spending should not drop below 3 percent of GDP, but added: “I hope to welcome Elon to the Pentagon very soon.”
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The billionaire’s DOGE team has already been engaged in drastic changes across the federal government, though their efforts lack any basis in legislation approved by Congress and are being carried out under uncertain legal authority.
However, on Tuesday, Trump handed the world’s wealthiest man even more power to reshape the federal government by signing an executive order requiring agencies to cooperate with DOGE by slashing their workforces and limiting the hiring of replacements.
Asked about critics who’ve called his anti-government efforts a “hostile takeover” of the executive branch, Musk told reporters: “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get.”
