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Elon Musk vowed that DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts will continue – even as he prepares to step back from the disruptive government department.
In a wide-ranging interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News Thursday, the billionaire, whose time as a “special government employee” terminates at the end of May, described DOGE as a “long-term enterprise.”
Musk initially promised DOGE would shave $2 trillion from federal spending and debt, but he quickly cut that amount in half. Last month, he lowered it further to $150 billion and then upped it to $160 billion, a tiny fraction of what he first promised.
Despite falling well short of expectations, Musk’s involvement with the government will be reduced to just a “day or two” going forward, as he turns his attention back to Tesla, whose profits took a huge hit in the first quarter of 2025.
“It’s a long-term enterprise because if we take our eye off the ball, the waste and fraud will come roaring back,” said Musk. “We’re trying to have it be such that the funding is removed, the grants are gone.”
One of the many criticisms leveled at DOGE has been its use of young staffers, who have little-to-no government experience.
One such staffer – Edward Coistine, who is also known as “Big Balls” – appeared alongside Musk on Jesse Watters Primetime to discuss his role for the first time.
“Who is Big Balls?” host Watters asked on his program, surrounded by DOGE members and supporters at a huge oval conference table.
“I am,” piped up 19-year-old DOGE staff member Edward Coristine.
“That should be obvious,” Musk quipped to laughter.
“I just set it [Big Balls] as my LinkedIn username,” said the high school grad.
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“People on LinkedIn take themselves like super seriously and are pretty averse to risk, and I was like, I want to be neither of those things,” he explained. “Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would notice.”
Coristine, who works in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, explained he uses “computer stuff” as he claims to ferret out “fraud and waste,” the mantra of his boss.
He explained, for example: “You look at a specific line item, $20 million. Okay, what is it going to? For the majority of payment systems it’s like, we don’t really know.”
DOGE critics have argued that the young techie crew’s analyses of pay systems demonstrate how little they know about basic bookkeeping and accounting.
Another staffer said Thursday that $330 million has been paid to dead people, but DOGE has yet to show evidence of that.
The DOGE staffers put on a show of force for Watters even as Musk has left the White House. The tech billionaire insisted his Department of Government Efficiency is not taking “its eye off the ball” in continued cuts to the federal government.
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Musk has yet to prove he and DOGE cut any waste and fraud, and figures show that he hasn’t managed to even reduce spending by the Trump administration.
Though an estimated 250,000 jobs have been eliminated by firing or buyouts, and federal agencies, grants, services and contracts have been slashed, Trump administration spending is actually up 6.3 percent (about $153 billion) over the same period last year when President Joe Biden was in office, according to Treasury data.
It’s difficult to know how much his Department of Government Efficiency has actually saved, given the error-riddled “receipts” that have been posted on the DOGE website.
Some cuts have cost the government countless dollars, such as firing Internal Revenue Service workers who ferret out tax cheats and collect the taxes that run the nation.
