President Donald Trump on Thursday took to his Truth Social page to call on the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team to claw back billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars allegedly paid out to a Georgia Democrat’s organization and Washington, D.C.-based media outlet Politico.
“Whatever happened to the $8,000,000 given by our ‘government’ to Radical Left Politico magazine, or whatever you would call it. Owned by wealthy guys, this money should be taken back by DOGE, ASAP,” Trump wrote.
“Also, is Stacey Abrams going to give back the Two Billion Dollars they funneled into her “environmental fund” just prior to my assuming office. She went from $100 in donations to $2,000,000,000 in just one day? Not bad!!! Get back the money,” Trump added.
In early February, the White House announced “that federal agencies are in the process of terminating expensive contracts with Politico after Elon Musk, leader of the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative, called them a ‘wasteful’ use of taxpayer money,” the New York Post reported.
According to usaspending.gov, Politico was allocated about $8.4 million in taxpayer funds over the 12 months ending September 30, 2024. The website now shows the current award amount as $8.2 million.
“I can confirm that the more than eight million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week during a regular briefing.
She added: “The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now. Again, this is a whole-of-government effort to ensure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books, and this president and his team are making decisions across the board.”
Meanwhile, Musk and seven members of the team provided details on the department’s cost-cutting mission in an exclusive sit-down interview with “Special Report” Thursday.
“We want to reduce spending by eliminating waste and fraud and reduce the spending by 15%, which seems really quite achievable,” Musk told “Special Report” Baier. “The government is not efficient, and there’s a lot of waste and fraud. So we feel confident that a 15% reduction can be done without affecting any of the critical government services.”
Musk, along with DOGE members Steve Davis, Joe Gebbia, Aram Moghaddassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause, and Tyler Hassen, provided a behind-the-scenes look at the department’s work, spanning from the Internal Revenue Service to the Interior Department and Social Security.
“This is a revolution. And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution. But at the end of the day, America’s going to be in much better shape,” he said. “It’s going to be a fantastic future.”
As of March 27, DOGE reported on its website that it has saved Americans $130 billion—equating to approximately $807.45 per taxpayer.
Trump charged the organization with streamlining federal operations and cutting spending, giving it an 18-month deadline to achieve these goals, Fox News noted.
Since then, the department has canceled a range of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at federal agencies, as well as numerous consulting contracts, leases for underused federal buildings, and even entire duplicate agencies and programs.
Musk and the seven DOGE members highlighted key initiatives undertaken by the department to achieve Trump’s objectives. Davis cited federal credit cards as a “mundane” yet “illustrative” example of DOGE’s work.
“There are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn’t make sense. So one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we’ve worked for the agencies and said, ‘Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?’” Davis explained.
“Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people,” Musk responded.
