The world’s wealthiest man says he ‘got a little too involved in politics’ after devastating global aid and the federal workforce

Elon Musk admits he “got carried away” working inside Donald Trump’s administration as the unelected director of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, where he implemented mass firings and radically cut federal spending.

“I think I got a little too involved in politics. I got carried away, frankly,” he told The Economist in a wide-ranging interview published Thursday, but offered few specifics on what he regretted.

But the world’s wealthiest man — who pumped millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign before he was deputized to oversee the president’s brutal cost-cutting operation — defended the work of DOGE and his dismantling of the nation’s global aid agency that he once promised to put through a “wood chipper.”

“We need to sort of take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. And I got a lot of flack for this, obviously,” he said.

I wonder if he can just see the writing on the wall, or if he was actually using a cannon to kill a fly? Maybe its that SpaceX isn’t doing so hot? Maybe its the investigation related to tRump going on about how Musk “really knows those voting machines” and how they’ll “never have to vote again”.

Either way, people are dead because of him. We won’t forget, and there will be an accounting for this.

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
    211·
    17 天前

    I was a government contractor for four years. I made really good money, worked from home, and had really good benefits. A year ago, Elon and Trump decided to stop paying the contract I was on. Between outsourcing and AI, I couldn’t find anyone to hire me. I had to work in a grocery store for six months with ten years of web development and project management experience. I start my job as a mailman on Monday. I’ll never forgive them and forsake anyone associated with them. Until the seas dry and the land breaks, I wish suffering and damnation upon them.

    • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
      21·
      16 天前

      it’s infuriating seeing the two assholes cutting everything and destroying the lifes of millions of people for literal pennies, then wasting trillions on a useless war that has only economic downsides, just because bibi asked it nicely

    • Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world
      12·
      17 天前

      I’ve been in, or worked for the military for 26 years last month so I’ve seen some political things. While DOGE didn’t kill my little 150 person org it wiped out a third of our experienced folks and eliminated all young folks we feed to the larger workforce.

      The large over arching programs like USAID will be fairly easily put back together but the folks not in the DMV will be hard to luer back.

      My command is fairly senior but two years ago I at 49 years old was about average, now I’m in the younger cohort, that’s not good for any workforce.

      • Zawaj_Al_Qasirat@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        16 天前

        How many kids have you killed or helped kill in your 26 years? Or did you perhaps refuel vehicles that lead to killing kids, fed some child killers to give them the strength to get through a day of child killing, or defended somewhere at home so killers could be deployed overseas to kill kids?

    • wheezy@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      17 天前

      Gonna be in the same place as soon as my daughter goes to public school. I really can’t justify paying at a minimum $3000 for child care in my area AND not see my kid. My wife has a solid job in another industry that won’t be touched by AI. Thankful for her.

      Grats on the mailman job. Sincerely, I couldn’t find a new job in software but it was also melting my mind being told I need to use AI all day long. I will happy to make less and do something else once the $36000 a year in childcare is not required. I have that privilege to wait after a decade in software thankfully.

    • Anivia@feddit.org
      2·
      16 天前

      I had to work in a grocery store for six months with ten years of web development and project management experience

      That sucks, but long term that would have been an inevitable outcome anyway. Web development experience is becoming a useless skill on the job market, as you have learned from first hand experience finding a job

  • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
    106·
    17 天前

    According to the estimates of Brooke Nichols, DOGE cuts to foreign aid programs had led to some 300,000 deaths by May 2025, mostly of children. By February 2026, when her counter that estimated the number of deaths was retired, the numbers were kept at the one-year mark from when the cuts began: 781,343 deaths caused by the funding discontinuation.

    Source

    Fuck him.

    781,343 deaths.

    You don’t just get to go “oops!” and walk away.

    Nearly eight hundred thousand dead in the first year. Probably much more by now.

    • Almacca@aussie.zoneEnglish
      32·
      17 天前

      He’s still ‘a little too involved’ in politics. He’s flinging his shit around the UK and EU now, acting like he knows best.

      Sounds to me like he’s admitting culpability for his crimes though. Some prosecutor should get on that.

      • turtlesareneat@piefed.caEnglish
        6·
        16 天前

        Oh he’s biding time. He sees what Trump did. He is going to come back as a politician after taking capitalism to its logical conclusion of “evil.”

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      16 天前

      We had to cut $400M in global aid and kill 800k kids in order to fund a pointless $50B war (and counting) that doesn’t exist but also we already won, where we killed tens of thousands more (and counting).

    • InputZero@lemmy.world
      3·
      16 天前

      The worst part is that he’s the wealthiest person to ever exist. He has more than enough money to help. He could be telling everyone in his employment to begin to undo the mess he made, but he won’t. He may donate a few million to a charity (that he owns) to build up some good will with the poors. The people he pays to be around him will tell him what a saint he is, caring for the poor. He’ll feel good about himself again. While millions of children still die.

  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
    54·
    17 天前

    “Sorry everyone, just got swept up in the moment. No hard feelings, right?” – A. Hitler

  • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
    33·
    16 天前

    The fact that there isn’t a well funded group actively hunting this man with the intent to mutilate him to death is somewhat shocking to me.

  • GreenBeard@lemmy.caEnglish
    33·
    17 天前

    If there were any justice, he would be convicted and face the death penalty. He’s a menace to humanity.

  • kurmudgeon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    16 天前

    Elon Musk is a colossal fucking moron. A pure complete dipshit. Why people keep giving this stupid fuck money is beyond me. He is an egotistical, narcissistic, racist, elitist, bigoted asshole. Let’s just all keep throwing $$$ at this piece of shit.

  • kibblebits@quokk.auEnglish
    24·
    17 天前

    Hur Dee Hur. Forgot y’all’s was real people down in that k-hole of “the world is a simulation”

  • Smoogs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    16 天前

    may this fucker be reincarnated into every last person who was denied USAID and died as a result this past year

    if there is some form of spiritual punishement in the after life his consiousness gets to witness every suffering. in excruciating detail.

  • NekoKoneko@lemmy.world
    21·
    17 天前

    “We need to sort of take a close look at spending and make sure that money is being spent in sensible ways and that it is not wasted or spent on fraudulent activities. And I got a lot of flack for this, obviously,” he said.

    Really? That’s why you got flack?

    Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but you got flack from me not for making sure money is being spent in sensible ways. I gave you some flack for being a self-dealing, child-killing, own-fart-smelling, public data-stealing, ketamine-addicted Nazi fascist sociopath who not only wielded your deluded political persecution complex as a weapon for punishing innocent people, you did so without even giving them the dignity of your actual attention unaided by AI.

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    20·
    17 天前

    This article tries to make him sound better than he was too. “where he implemented mass firings and radically cut federal spending.”

    He didn’t radically cut federal spending. Federal spending isn’t down, he just fired people and the money stayed the same really.

    Let’s say the CDC that is struggling to track this parasite presumed in lettuce(cyclosporiasis) which was tracked since 1997. Why, well Kennedy told them not to track it anymore in July 2025. July 2026, largest number of cases ever recorded.

    The CDC fired ~3200 people, roughly 25% of their staff. Yet the budget request for the CDC in 2026 isn’t really any different than 2025, 2024 etc. Maybe a fair comparison would be comparing the 2018, 2019 time period during Trump’s first admin to now, the CDC budget is essentially the same when you adjust it for inflation over that time.

    Full federal budget estimates look like

    2024 budget: 6.8 trillion

    2025 budget: 7 trillion

    2026 we are at 5.52 trillion including June with 6 months left

    So it surely doesn’t look like he “radically cut federal spending”… He just radically cut federal employment, and they are still spending the money.

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      11·
      17 天前

      So it surely doesn’t look like he “radically cut federal spending”… He just radically cut federal employment

      He radically cut spending alright. He radically cut spending on ensuring the wellbeing of the not-rich. The spending is now just all going to the Epstein class.

    • left_is_best@feddit.onlineEnglish
      4·
      16 天前

      These people are eugenicists. They are trying to kill us. The ones they can’t kill will have their wealth siphoned from them to fund this balooning, kleptocratic federal deficit. They are looting the near-dead body of the empire so they can transcend nations, and us, the blood, flesh and bones, will be left to rot. We have one, maybe two chances left to defeat these people peacefully.