America's Talking - Trump’s Cost-Cutting Project Continues as Musk Prepares to Step Back From DOGE

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump's goals for the Department of Government Efficiency remain even as leader Elon Musk prepares to spend less time on government matters and more time with electric vehicle maker Tesla. When Trump first created DOGE, before taking office, he said it would be the government cost-cutting equivalent of the "Manhattan Project." Both Trump and Musk promised Americans would get a more efficient government after DOGE addressed government waste and cut regulations, but the final product – a streamlined government – isn't due until July 4, 2026, the nation's 250th birthday.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_6b6d3bd7-80e3-4c5e-8186-c4aaa8bf696e.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk said this week that he will be spending less time in Washington, D.C., focusing on finding waste, fraud, and inefficiencies in the federal government, so he can focus more attention on Tesla, the electric vehicle company he founded. At the same time, other White House officials continue to say they are finding ways

to cut bloat in their agencies. Joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, Elon Musk, spending less time in Washington, D.C. has been a controversial figure. What do you think that means for President Trump's efforts to cut waste and fraud in the government? Yeah, I mean, I think Musk has largely been actually a shield for the president. President Trump's one of the most controversial politicians in modern history. And yet, in the first almost 100 days of his president, Democrats have spent most of their time attacking, not the president, but Elon Musk. And so he's actually

been very useful to the president. I think a lot of people are trying to characterize this as a massive loss. I think that Musk certainly didn't live up to his promises when it came to cuts. I think he was maybe just over-optimistic about human nature and just how entrenched the bureaucracy really is in D.C. But he did expose a lot of cuts, and he did have some big wins. We could talk about that. But more importantly, he's really given cover to President Trump as Trump has been rolling out. I mean, we're trying to keep up with it at the Soonersquare.com, but he's signing executive orders almost every day. We're talking, you know, maybe 20 a week. I mean, she's rolling out all these policies so quickly that the media and the Democrats don't even have time to criticize all of them.

And with what time they do have, they're talking about Elon Musk. The thing is, Musk isn't running for re-election. Musk isn't even really a Republican or hasn't been. clearly sided with Republicans recently. But, you know, it's pretty easy, I think, for Trump and other Republicans to shed Musk, like a coat, a useful coat in that season that Musk go back to his companies. He's still, I think Musk will be able to recover from this. He'll get Tesla stock back up. He'll focus on his companies and he'll be back on Joe Rogan in a year talking about how corrupt DC is and how difficult it was to do Doge because of that. And maybe he'll say if you think

critical of President Trump and he'll be kind of back in that weird, independent media space, not Republican or Democrat. But, and so I think he's going to be fine. I think it was good for President Trump because all those attacks went on on Musk. And now he can kind of go into the next phase, the post 100 days phase of his new, of his second term. Casey, despite all those criticism about Doge and, and the cuts to government spending, to jobs, etc. The fact of the matter is, the U.S. national debt is approaching $37 trillion.

Under the Biden administration, annual budget, federal budget deficits surpassed $2 trillion. I think when you explain that to voters, they would say, yeah, we do need to cut back government spending. I think it's the way the Doge has approached it, maybe, that has some Americans, is concerned over it. What do you think there? Yeah, I mean, he tried to move fast and cut things quickly. I think the problem is that there's not really the political will among Republicans to make major cuts. They love to tout these, you know, smaller grants that are controversial and different things like that. But that's a very small percentage of the budget. And you could cut every single grant like that and not get rid of the deficit. So I don't think Republicans actually have the political

will or backbone right now to make huge cuts that are needed to balance the budget. On top of that, you know, Democrats have traditionally not wanted to make cuts. And there's a lot of Democrats and some Republicans who really don't believe that national debt is a problem. Sort of like a Keynesian view that you can take out debt, print money, it stimulates the economy. As long as the debt's reasonable, it's actually not really going to be a problem that comes back to haunt you. There's a lot of people really believe that.

And so you have some of that. And on top of that, the Democrats don't want Trump to get credit for cutting some of these good cuts. And they want to just advertise en masse the potential cuts he could make to things like Social Security. Musk made a fatal flaw, I think, of talking about, you could say it's a mistake of talking about the need to cut Social Security and without maybe always being explicitly clear that he doesn't mean benefits. But maybe he did mean benefits. There's a lot of fraud, waste, fraud, and abuse and Social Security. The big entitlement programs are by far, like, the biggest problem when it comes to our national debt. And everybody wants to talk about, you know, transgender operas and climate grants to build, you know, windmills that aren't doing anything.

But if you're not going to touch Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, or defense spending, you're not going to get the budget under control. With Elon Musk announcing that he's going to step away, not completely, but in pun, from his duties under the Trump administration in Washington, D.C. Do you think the Doge effort is losing momentum? It's lost momentum, but, you know, it may be that I think that the Doge brand is oddly very strong, even without Elon. And there's the thing is there is generally among the American people a very strong support for cutting waste fraud and abuse.

It's just when you get to, well, what about this? civic program, they say, oh, well, not that one. Right. So we generally believe that they should have a budget and live within their means, but then when you say, hey, well, you're going to stop going out to eat so much, they're like, well, I don't know about that. And the same is true at the federal level. So I think because people generally support cuts, having a sort of institutionalized doge that is in charge of always finding waste, fraud, and abuse that lives beyond Elon. Could be part of Elon's legacy. It could be part of Trump's legacy. And I could see, you know, Republicans supporting making that office permanent somehow. There is a congressional committee

in the house that is called Doge. It sort of has a different name, but it is the Doge subcommittee. So I think it could be a really good idea for Republicans to try to make this permanent to create something in D.C. that's always exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse without maybe quite so much drama. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com.