House DOGE caucus leader says ‘everybody knew' Elon Musk was exaggerating his cost-cutting achievements
Republican U.S. Rep. Blake Moore told reporters that, behind the scenes, many were skeptical about the bold claims of the world's richest man.
"Most everybody knew Elon was exaggerating what he could do," Moore of Utah told reporters outside the Capitol on Thursday. "He was claiming to find $4 billion a day in cuts he was going to get. One time, he said $2 trillion, he was going to find."
"It's a massive exaggeration, and I think people are recognizing that now," he added.
It comes in the wake of the explosive fallout between Musk and the president on Thursday afternoon. The two men traded verbal blows from their respective social media platforms, culminating in Musk claiming that Trump was 'in the Epstein files.'
Moore is one of three co-leaders of the House DOGE caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who had hoped to support Musk's cost-cutting efforts prior to the blow-up.
According to Business Insider, the group had intended to compile a report of potential cost-saving measures for DOGE at the end of the first quarter, but reportedly received little contact from the department.
"We've always been a little frustrated that there was such limited interaction," Moore said. "We couldn't really identify where we were to lean in, and we had a ton of folks ready to support it, but there just wasn't that interaction."
Moore is among many others in the government who wish to pursue cuts to federal spending through the bipartisan government funding process. '[There are] plenty of Democrats that recognize there's waste in our government,' he said.
The bromance between Musk and Trump had been winding down in recent weeks after the tech billionaire criticized the president's "Big Beautiful Bill" – the spending bill that Republicans are trying to get through Congress.
Musk is among those arguing that the bill would increase the deficit by trillions of dollars.
"When I saw Musk start posting, just parroting false claims about the tax reconciliation bill, it was clear something's amiss," Moore said following the online bust-up. "And so it escalated, yeah. It escalated very quickly."
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