Trump says Elon Musks DOGE team doing a great job, will look at slashing Pentagon spending

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative will look at the Defense Department’s massive budget after making significant cuts at other federal agencies — most notably the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — while charging that critics of the effort “don’t love our country.”“Pentagon, Education, just about everything.We’re going to go through everything,” Trump said at a joint White House press conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.“It was so bad, with what we just went through — with this horrible situation we just went through, and I guess 97% of the people have been dismissed,” Trump said, referring to massive headcount reductions at USAID that were due to take effect at 11:59 p.m.

Friday.“It was very, very unfortunate.You’re not going to find anything like that, but you’re going to find a lot.

And I’ve instructed him to go check out Education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military.And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad,” the president went on.The Pentagon has the largest amount of federal discretionary spending — and an infamous history of overpayments, such as spending $10,000 on toilet seat covers for Air Force cargo planes, an outlay which was ended in 2018 after it became public.Trump added, in reference to the sweeping USAID grant and staffing cuts: “I don’t think proportionally you’re going to see anything like we just saw.”Musk’s DOGE initiative has seen a group of young staffers poring over spending at agencies, with the world’s richest man spotlighting many cases of alleged waste on X, which he owns.Trump said in the Oval Office earlier Friday that USAID’s spending was mostly “corrupt or ridiculous” and added that “the whole thing is a fraud.”“Elon is doing a great job.

He’s finding tremendous fraud and corruption and waste,” the president...