Elon Musk says Trump admin must ‘delete entire agencies’ to downsize government

"I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said during the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, through a video call on Thursday, according to Politico. “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 comments follow multiple efforts by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk leads, to cut down on different executive agencies. The effort, supported by Trump, has included cutting down staff and offering buyouts to federal employees. Some agencies that have been impacted include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the EPA.

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

Throughout his remarks, Musk criticized specific agencies, including USAID, which has been a target of DOGE.

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

Musk added that Trump’s deferred resignation program buyout for federal employees has been “generous,” noting that workers who opt to retire can still continue working until September, take vacations, or find second jobs.

The White House said on Thursday that 75,000 people had accepted the offer, which concluded this week after a judge lifted a pause on the deadline for the offer to go through. Federal labor unions had attempted to sue the Trump administration over the buyout.

Musk compared DOGE’s work to running a company like when he purchased Twitter, the social media company, now known as X, for $44 billion in 2022. He noted that the staff was cut by 80 percent but still improved the “functionalities and capabilities” of the platform. “It’s like a corporate turnaround but at a much larger scale,” he said.