Elon Musk says he saved the U.S. taxpayer more than $160 million during his first three months getting the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) off the ground — but he also enjoyed midnight snacks of ice cream from the White House kitchen, a ‘comically tiny office’ and a friendship with President Donald Trump.
Fox News Digital was invited, along with a small group of reporters, to have an on-the-record discussion with Musk in the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Wednesday evening about his first 100 days as a special government employee.
That status allowed him to work for the federal government for ‘no more than 130 days in a 365-day period,’ according to data from the Office of Government Ethics. Musk said the first 100 days was ‘an intense period’ and said at times, he was in Washington, D.C., working on his DOGE efforts ‘7 days a week, or close to 7 days a week.’
Musk said he will cut that down to one or two days a week, or every other week, and will continue working for the Trump administration ‘at the discretion of the president.’
‘I’m willing to contribute one to two days a week, coming to D.C. every other week for one to three days—indefinitely, as long as the president wants me to do that,’ Musk said. ‘It’s largely a volunteer organization.’
Musk, in response to a question from Fox News Digital, said he has slept in the White House’s Lincoln bedroom multiple times.
‘I didn’t think I would ever sleep in there,’ Musk said. ‘The president, we’re good friends, and we’ll be on Air Force One, or Marine One, and he’ll be like, ‘do you want to stay over?’ and I’ll be like, ‘sure,’ and he’ll send me to the Lincoln bedroom.’
Musk said he did not ever ‘request it,’ but that Trump would always ask ”do you want to stay here?”
‘And he gave me a tour of the Lincoln bedroom, and told me all the history,’ Musk said.
‘And then, he’ll actually call me late night and say, ‘by the way, make sure you get ice cream from the kitchen,’ Musk recalled. ‘I ate a whole tub of ice cream—caramel. Häagen-Dazs.’
Musk laughed, ‘Yeah, it’s epic.’
‘Don’t tell RFK I ate a whole tub,’ Musk laughed. ‘The president is a very good host, and he said, make sure you have some of the ice cream, and I said OK. I went to the kitchen and got some ice cream.’
When asked for the exact number of nights Musk slept in the Lincoln bedroom, he replied, ‘I don’t know if I should say the number—more than once.’
Musk was also given a small office in the White House, which he said he intends to keep.
‘I’m keeping my micro-office,’ Musk said, adding that it is ‘on the top floor it has a view of nothing.’
‘It has a window but all you see is an HVAC unit,’ Musk explained. ‘I guess it’s harder to shoot me—there’s not a good line of sight in there.’
‘I like my comically tiny office upstairs,’ Musk said, adding that, while it is tiny, he has ‘the biggest monitor,’ where he views ‘important information—secret stuff.’ Musk admitted, though, that he has ‘occasionally played a video game.’
When asked by Fox News Digital which video game, Musk laughed and said, ‘Diablo in the Path of Exile.’
As for DOGE, Musk said he is proud of its work so far, and ‘in the grand scheme of things, I think we’ve been effective,’ just ‘not as effective as I’d like.’
‘I think we could be more effective, but we’ve made progress —and more progress than I think has happened since Clinton and Gore,’ Musk said. ‘It is ironic to see the Clinton and Gore speeches — they sound like DOGE. If you took a transcript and say who said it? DOGE or Clinton-Gore? You would have a hard time. They sound identical to what we say.’
He added, ‘We are just Democrats from the ’90s who got teleported into 2025.’
‘Things have just evolved. There is that classic saying, we didn’t leave the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left us,’ Musk continued. ‘Just, objectively, from a policy standpoint, that is just objectively true. Our goals are safe cities, secure borders, sensible spending—these used to be Democrat positions and perhaps they will be in the future — but they just seem like common sense.’
Meanwhile, Musk reflected on his day-to-day for the first 100 days, saying that things ‘have to be very intense for the first three months, so trying to understand what’s going on and map out the government in general.’
‘The federal government is a gigantic beast — very complicated — and so if you’re trying to figure out how to stop waste and fraud, you’ve got to map the territory,’ Musk said. ‘That required three months of intense effort, and you have to build the team as well.’
‘A new administration is like a start-up,’ Musk continued. ‘Now, we’re getting more of a rhythm and so the amount of time necessary for me to spend here is much less and I can return to primarily running my companies, which do need me.’
Fox News Digital asked Musk if he has had fun during his first three months leading DOGE.
‘It’s like, 60% fun. 70% fun — depends on the week,’ Musk said. ‘But being attacked relentlessly is not super fun. Seeing cars burning is not fun. But when I feel like we’re doing good for the American taxpayer and stopping wasteful spending and fixing computer systems, I feel like that’s a good thing.’
A DOGE official at the meeting on Wednesday said that 1% of the federal workforce, or slightly more than 20,000 people, have been fired. However, that official stressed that the federal government has ‘hired 26,000 people.’
‘So we have hired more people than we’ve fired,’ the official said.
Musk chimed in and said, in America, ‘we actually want to have fewer people in the federal government and more people making things.’
Musk also told reporters that DOGE has referred cases of fraud to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
‘The wheels of justice turn slowly but, hopefully, surely,’ Musk said. ‘When we find cases of fraud, we refer those cases to the DOJ — it is not DOGE prosecuting anyone.’
Musk said there are ‘hundreds of thousands of cases of what appear to be fraud,’ but a DOGE official said they have referred, at this point, 57 cases of possible voter fraud to the DOJ.
Musk also said he will meet with the House DOGE caucus next week, and said his work with House and Senate lawmakers has been ‘extremely positive.’
At the end of the conversation, Musk laughed and said, ‘It is funny that we’ve got DOGE.’
‘Are we in a simulation here? Or what’s going on? How did we get here?!’ Musk laughed.
‘I’m proud of the incredible work by the DOGE team who have taken a lot of flak and these are people who could easily get high-paying jobs in the private sector, and, in fact, came from high-paying jobs in the private sector,’ Musk said.
DOGE has fewer than 100 employees.
‘Some will stay on, some will not,’ Musk said. ‘It is up to them. This is basically a volunteer organization.’
When asked if DOGE is winding down, Musk said, ‘No.’
‘DOGE is a way of life,’ Musk said. ‘Like Buddhism. You wouldn’t ask who would lead Buddhism.’
When asked who would lead DOGE when Musk is not in Washington, Musk replied, ‘Is Buddha needed for Buddhism?’