Elon Musk will likely uncover billions of dollars in wasteful and fraudulent spending at the U.S. Defense Department, U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Feb. 9.
Musk, currently the world's richest man, heads the Trump-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an organization tasked with eliminating waste from the federal budget.
Trump praised Musk's work — which has thus far included mass government layoffs and unprecedented cuts to humanitarian aid — as "terrific."
"I'm going to tell him very soon… to go check the Department of Education. He's going to find the same thing. Then I'm going to go into the military. Let's check the military," he told Fox News on Feb. 9.
"We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse, and the people elected me on that."
The remarks come amid Trump and Musk's joint efforts to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), America's chief foreign aid distributor. Musk has called USAID "a criminal organization."
USAID funds critical reconstruction efforts in Ukraine amid Russia's full-scale war. It also supports a range of humanitarian initiatives worldwide, such as clean water access, energy security, and anti-corruption programs.
The Trump administration has frozen all foreign aid for 90 days and plans to lay off most of USAID's global workforce. While Trump and Musk have repeatedly denounced widespread fraud at the agency, they have not provided any evidence to support these claims.
The White House has also taken steps in the last two weeks to dismiss government officials and replace them with Trump loyalists.
Reuters reported in November 2024 that the Trump team wasalso preparing lists of names for mass dismissals at the Pentagon.
Musk's attempts to slash funding at the Pentagon may further threaten the already tenuous future of U.S. military support for Ukraine. Previously allocated weapons packages from the U.S. are about to run out, and neither Trump nor Congress have approved new arms shipments to Kyiv.
Olena Goncharova
(Updated: )
