“I’m going to tell him [Elon Musk] very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education,” Trump said in a pre-recorded interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier set to air before the Super Bowl on Sunday. “He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to tell him to go check the military. Let’s check the military. We’ll find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that.”
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Trump appointed Elon Musk to head the Department of Government Efficiency with the goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. During the excerpt of his Sunday interview, Trump said Musk has been “terrific” with his work to cut government spending.
The president has promised to abolish the Education Department, which is responsible for providing about 10% of K-12 funding nationwide and operates the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program.
And in the Department of Defense, there have been many instances of the military overpaying contractors.
“There is a huge problem of the government being able to supervise these contractors carefully enough to be able to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth,” Don Kettl, an expert on government administration and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told TIME.
Before the creation of DOGE, it was discovered by the Congressional Budget Office that Congress had provided $516 billion in funding in fiscal 2024 for programs that had expired under federal law. This equates to nearly 500 expired programs, according to CBO’s July report.
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In addition, the federal government made an estimated $236 billion in improper payments for government programs in fiscal 2023. “Improper payments and fraud are long-standing and significant problems in the federal government,” House testimony from the Government Accountability Office in September said.
Trump’s full interview with Fox News is set to air just before Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. He will become the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl when he attends the game in New Orleans.
