Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on social media on Wednesday that he has left Doge after five months of viral moments and cuts sparked both national praise and controversy. Fox News Digital has put together five top memorable moments from its range.
President Trump and Tesla photo shoot at the White House
Musk’s efforts to cut government waste have led to rage and violent protests from Democrats at Tesla dealers nationwide, and with Tesla’s stock price drop, President Donald Trump announced he would buy Tesla, and announced he would meet Musk outside the White House to see options.
“I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning, as a brand new American confidence and support show,” Trump announced.
What will be next for Doge after Elon Musk’s departure? “Just starting”
Musk announced his last day this week as Doge’s official face. (Doge via X/Getty)
“For Republicans, Conservatives and all the great Americans, Elon Musk ‘puts it on the line’ to help our country and he does an amazing job! Socializing.
Trump and Musk looked at various Tesla models and took photos of them sitting inside them.
Musk entered the passenger side and joked about how to start a vehicle that can reach 60 mph in seconds, “sent a heart attack on the Secret Service.”
“It’s beautiful, this is another panel… It’s all computers!” Trump said in a comment that went viral on social media. “That’s beautiful! Amazing!”
Trump told reporters he would write a check for the car of his choice. It retailed for around $80,000 and left it at the White House so his staff could drive it. The president also said he hopes his purchase will boost Tesla. Tesla struggled with slack sales and lower share prices at the time.
Iron Mountain Revelation
One of the most notable dog revelations that scrutinized the government for waste, fraud and abuse was the mask announcement in February, saying his agency is considering a limestone mine in Pennsylvania and that the retirement of federal employees is being handled manually using a system that could take months.
“Well, what? Why? Well, all the resignation documents are manuals on paper,” Musk said. “It’s calculated manually and written down on a piece of paper. And it’s down to mine, what does it mean?”
Doge wrote to X that an old limestone mine in Boyers, Pennsylvania, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, is to run more than 230 feet underground by about 700 workers, processing around 10,000 federal retirement applications per month.
The application is hand-processed using paper and stored in envelopes and cardboard boxes in Manila, Doge said.
The Washington Post described the facility in a 2014 article as “a sinkhole of bureaucracy.” At the time, the report said total spending on the retirement system was $55.8 million.
“And the speed, the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, and determines how many people can retire from the federal government,” Musk said. “And the elevator breaks down and sometimes you can’t, no one can retire. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Bureaucratic and wasteful”: Doge sniffs eye-opening spending at Biden Day’s efforts at major institutions
Lil X, the son of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, was in Washington on March 14th, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Lil X steals a show at the White House
Musk’s four-year-old son, A-12, also known as “Lil X,” has often accompanied his father to visit the White House and Capitol Hill in recent months, and has often gone viral on social media.
In February, Lil X attended an oval office meeting and made headlines after imitating his father while he spoke.
“This is an X, he’s a great guy. High IQ,” Trump laughs, adding that the boy is a “high IQ individual.”
In March, a heartwarming photo of him walking to Trump’s helicopter with Marin’s son, the president’s helicopter, went viral on social media, causing internet users to dot in a happy moment.
Explosive interviews with the Doge team, “Big Balls”
Musk sat down with Brett Beyer, executive editor of the Special Report, to reveal a behind-the-scenes interview with members of his team at the beginning of March, offering to not do previously invisible work.
Musk, along with Dozi members Steve Davis, Joe Gebvier, Aram Mogadassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Kraus and Tyler Hassen, demonstrated the department’s important efforts to achieve Trump’s goals. Davis raised federal credit cards. He labeled it a “mediocre” example of Doge’s work.
As discovered by Elon Musk’s Doge, the top 5 most outrageous ways the government has wasted your tax money
President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk leave on March 11, 2025 after seeing a Tesla vehicle on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“The federal government has around 4.6 million credit cards with around 2.3 million to 2.4 million employees. This makes no sense. So one of the things that all the teams have been working on is that we work at agencies and say, “Do you need these credit cards? Are they being used?”
“Obviously, there shouldn’t be more credit cards than people are,” Musk replied.
The eight-person group also discussed Doge’s work on federal work, financial management, government infrastructure, computer systems, social security, and more.
“They might characterize it as a shooting from the waist, but that’s something else,” Musk said.
Earlier this month, Musk and his team gave a second obvious interview with Jesse Watters Primetime, which outlines examples of waste discovered in the government.
As the team shared cases of wasted spending from the top division to small institutions, Watters asked how the findings made Musk and Doge members feel.
“Unfortunately, it’s hard not to get a little paralyzed, like the 100th time you’ve heard it. And on the 200th, you’re well, OK, that was another day in the office,” Musk replied.
One Doge member who joined Musk in “Jesse Watters Primetime” revealed that he had dropped out of Harvard to “serve my country” but faced backlash.
“It was a shame to see the lost friendship. Most of the campus hates me now, but basically, I hope that through conversations like this, people will realize that reform is really necessary,” he said.
In an interview, 19-year-old Doge team member Edward Coristine revealed how she got the nickname “Big Balls,” which she received quite a bit of chatter online.
Coristine went on to say that the system that distributes government or taxpayer money is “literally not checked or accountable to actual American taxpayers.”
“So it’s a huge vector for fraud, waste, abuse.”
Dismantling USAID
Of the many institutions that experienced cuts during the Musk era at Doge, USAID was perhaps the most discussed and most affected of Doge’s findings.
In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of the USAID program will be cancelled after Doge’s six-week review.
A total of 5,200 contracts have ended, Rubio wrote in X, announcing the new reforms. He said the cancelled contract reached “thousands of billions of dollars” in US national interest or in a way that would not cause harm.
Rubio added that the remaining 18% (1,000 proximity) of the USAID program will be managed by the State Department. The move to transfer that authority came in consultation with Congress, he said.
Click here to get the Fox News app
Elon Musk, then Senior White House Advisor, walks to the White House after landing the Marines on the South Lawn in Washington on March 9, 2025. (Samuel Column/Getty Images)
Several examples of suspicious spending have been published by Doge, including where Biden’s USAID awarded a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called “Ahlan Simsim Iraq” and where Biden’s USAID awarded a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to “promote mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups.”
Over $900,000 was awarded to the “Gaza-based terrorism charity,” known as the Baiadar Environmental Development Association, and $1.5 million went to a programme scheduled for “diversity, equity and inclusion in the Serbian workplace and business community.”
Alec Schemmel, Stephen Sorace and Apsociated Press of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
Andrew Mark Miller is a Fox News reporter. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email him with tips to Andrewmark.miller@fox.com.
Source link
