'This administration is excellent': Elon Musk backs Trump while reflecting on DOGE role

WASHINGTON, DC: Elon Musk described President Donald Trump's administration as "excellent" in a wide-ranging interview published on Thursday, July 23, even as he acknowledged getting swept up in politics during his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

He also reflected on his brief stint as the head of the DOGE, his views on artificial intelligence, the future of work, Mars, and even his prediction that the United Kingdom could face civil unrest in the coming decades.

Elon Musk feels he got a 'little too involved in politics'

"I think I got a little too involved in politics," Musk told The Economist's Zanny Minton Beddoes. "Got carried away, frankly."

Asked whether he still backs the administration, the tech mogul said he's "not going to agree with everything any administration does," but that on balance, Trump's team is doing "excellent."

"No administration is perfect, but it's vastly better than the alternative," he added. 

Musk poured roughly $200 million into Trump's 2024 campaign before taking on his DOGE role, which he initially said would cut up to $2 trillion from the federal deficit within a year.

As DOGE approached its first anniversary, its own tally put total savings at $214 billion, less than a quarter of that original target, with $28.3 billion of the total coming from cuts to the US Agency for International Development, an aid organization Musk once said he wanted to feed into a "wood chipper."

Despite the shortfall against his own projections, the Tesla CEO defended the underlying mission in the interview, saying, "We need to sort of take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. And I got a lot of flak for this, obviously."

Musk also maintained that the organizations that had their funding cut were operating fraudulently, before reiterating that “zero people died because of DOGE. 0 POINT 0!”

A complicated moment for Elon Musk's businesses

Talking to the Economist, however, he appeared to relish the attention his political involvement had garnered, and the influence he believed he exerted.

“People don’t realize that what I’m saying will come to pass,” he said. The outlet described Musk as a modern-day Cassandra, at least in his own telling. 

The tech billionaire reflected on moving from “exhilaration to terror” in a single day, but was not referring to the SpaceX share price. Instead, he was talking about artificial intelligence, which he believes will ultimately render work by humans “optional.”

The reflection comes amid a bruising stretch for Musk's business empire. Tesla vehicle sales have been declining, and while the company has seen jumps in AI-related revenue, heavy spending in that area has weighed on its share price in recent days.

Musk briefly became the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX's stock market debut in June pushed his personal wealth above $1.25 trillion, though it has since fallen back to around $750 billion.