‘we Need To Delete Entire Agencies’: Elon Musk Has Bigger Plans For Remaking The Government

Elon Musk said the United States must “delete entire agencies” in order to achieve the Trump administration’s goals of drastically downsizing and restructuring the federal workforce.

“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said via a video call to the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Thursday. “It’s kind of like a weed, if we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”

Musk’s appearance at the summit comes on the heels of his controversial attempt to overhaul federal government programs through his Department of Government Efficiency. His work, which is endorsed by President Donald Trump, has included threatening mass layoffs, calling for the closure of agencies and seeking access to sensitive government databases.

“How many agencies do you really need to run a country, 99?” Musk said. “Not 450, that’s for sure.”

During his remarks, Musk took jabs at specific agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development — DOGE’s primary target so far.

“How much democracy have they achieved lately?” Musk said. “I don’t know, not much.”

He also called Trump’s deferred resignation program for federal workers “generous,” emphasizing how employees who choose to retire can still work through September, go on vacation, get a second job or do “whatever they want.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that 75,000 people accepted the offer, which closed this week after a federal judge allowed the “Fork in the Road” plan to move forward Wednesday.

Musk said DOGE’s work was like running a corporation, comparing the effort to his work downsizing Twitter. Musk purchased the social media platform, now known as X, for $44 billion in 2022. He boasted about reducing the company’s staff by 80 percent, while at the same time, advancing the “functionalities and capabilities” of the platform.

“It’s like a corporate turnaround but at a much larger scale,” he said.