Trump Sets Musk’s Doge On Defense, Education Departments

President Donald Trump said Friday that he has directed Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to dig into spending at multiple government agencies, including the Defense Department.

“Pentagon, education, just about everything,” Trump said during his press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

The president said Musk would find “a lot.”

“Sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don’t think proportionally you’ll see anything like we just saw,” the president added, referencing USAID, where the Trump administration has placed nearly the entire staff on leave.

Reviewing Pentagon spending would amount to a major undertaking for the $800-plus billion agency that has never managed to pass its own financial audits.

The potential for Musk and his controversial, secretive group to find areas within the massive DOD enterprise they will want to cut is practically guaranteed. Despite years of trying, only the Marine Corps has managed to pass an annual audit, while the other services, and the Pentagon overall, struggle to wrap their hands around the assets they own across the globe.

The global footprint that employs 3.3 million service members and civilians also relies on a global supply chain for parts for everything from nuts and bolts to nuclear propulsion systems for aircraft carriers and submarines, making the department the most unwieldy and complex federal agency.

Musk holds billions in government contracts, many of them to provide SpaceX and Starlink services to the armed services. Musk in recent months has criticized the multi-billion dollar F-35 fighter program, suggesting that cheaper drones could do the same work. Any attempted cuts to programs like the F-35 or shipbuilding would run headlong into entrenched constituencies on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers with hundreds or thousands of jobs at stake in their districts would likely fight back.

It is unclear if Musk had reached out to Pentagon leadership. Multiple spokespeople at the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s remarks underscore the long leash given to Musk and the DOGE team for their mission to dig into the federal government’s coffers and cut. Many Democrats have challenged the group’s authority to access sensitive government data and reverse spending authorized by Congress.

When asked if there was any governmental agency or information that the president would keep out of Musk’s purview, Trump was nonspecific.

Instead, he praised the DOGE team as a “very capable” group of people who “know what they’re doing.”

“They’ll ask questions, and they'll see immediately … that they're either crooked or don't know what they're doing,” Trump said. “I will pick a target I say, ‘go in.’ There could be areas that we won't but I think everything's fair game. I don't know, you could say maybe some high intelligence or something and I'll do that myself if I have to.”

The president added that Social Security would not be touched though he added, without evidence, that there were undocumented immigrants who were getting Social Security and Medicare and he or DOGE would try and get them off of those benefits lists

However, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits.