Thomas English
Just before a test launch for SpaceX’s Starship on Tuesday night, Elon Musk said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) became a “whipping boy” for Washington dysfunction.
Musk, who served as chief advisor to DOGE, told The Washington Post admitted he had underestimated the scale of “the federal bureaucracy situation,” calling it “much worse than I realized.” As the SpaceX founder retreats from Washington, he described the initiative as having become a convenient scapegoat for government dysfunction.
“DOGE is just becoming a whipping boy for everything,” Musk told the Post. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
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The end of Musk’s Beltway tenure follows significant public backlash that affected his business empire. Tesla faced vandalism at showrooms across the country, with the CEO lamenting that “people were burning Teslas” amid the political turmoil.
“Why would you do that? That’s really uncool,” he said.
Tesla’s stock suffered during Musk’s public-facing stint in government, though shares have begun recovering as he diverts more attention to his businesses.
Musk’s comments also coincide with his public criticism of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. In a separate CBS Sunday Morning interview, he expressed disappointment with the president’s “big, beautiful bill” — a massive tax and spending package that passed the House last week.
“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation would add $3.1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. “I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”
Despite stepping back from his Washington advisory role, at least in a public-facing capacity, Musk insisted DOGE’s work isn’t finished — though he emphasized more technical goals, focusing on modernizing the federal government’s computer systems.
“There’s, like, so many situations where the computers are so broken,” Musk told the Post, describing government systems where moving “data from one computer to another, you have to print it out and then type it into the next computer. And this is just literally a thing that was brought to my attention.”
Tuesday’s SpaceX Starship test flight, which Musk attended at the company’s Texas facility, ended with mixed results — the rocket didn’t explode during launch but spun out of control in space and failed to return intact.
“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over the last flight!” Musk posted on X. “Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent.”
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