Elon Musk, senior adviser to President Donald Trump and the driving force behind the Department of Government Efficiency, unveiled the “chainsaw for bureaucracy” at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday and carried live by Newsmax.
After his interview with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt onstage, Argentine president Javier Milei presented Musk with the chainsaw.
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk bellowed to the crowd.
Up to that point, Musk detailed for Schmitt, host of “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” how easy it is to cut waste in the federal government given the scale.
“People ask me, what's the most surprising thing that you've encountered when you go to D.C.? And I said, well, the most surprising thing is the scale of the expenditures and actually how easy it is to, just when you add caring and competence, where it was absent before, you can actually save billions of dollars, sometimes in an hour. Like it's wild,” Musk said.
He also said Trump is “supportive” of the idea of DOGE dividend checks, an idea that was floated by Azoria CEO and co-founder James Fishback on Wednesday. Musk told Fishback that he would “check with the president.”
“It's money that's taken away from things that are destructive to the country and from organizations that hate you to you. That's awesome. That's like glorious. That's like the best, the spoils of battle,” Musk told Schmitt on Thursday.
“I talked to the president, he’s supportive of that. And so it sounds like you know that's something we're going to do. So as we're finding savings, that's going to translate directly to reductions in tax,” he added.
Musk took Democrats to task over their criticisms of cutting waste and fraud.
“[I]t just shows that they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who's working hard, paying taxes. And then they say, ‘Oh, $1 million doesn't matter.’ And I'm like, I think it matters a lot to people, you know? What are you talking about?”
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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