Elon Musk says he got ‘too involved’ in politics during DOGE stint, won’t do it again

Elon Musk, the man who spent the first half of 2025 trying to restructure the US federal government like a startup that missed its Series B metrics, now says he regrets how deep he went into politics. In an interview with The Economist published on July 23, Musk admitted he “got a little too involved” in the political arena during his tenure running the Department of Government Efficiency. He also made clear he has no interest in reprising the role. What DOGE actually did, and didn’t do The initiative was operational from early 2025 until Musk’s resignation in May 2025, a roughly five-month sprint that resulted in more than 211,000 federal employees leaving their positions. The program claimed approximately $160 billion in savings. Whether those savings translated into actual deficit reduction remains unverified. DOGE was originally supposed to run until July 2026. Instead, it stopped functioning as a centralized body by late 2025, dissolving months ahead of schedule without the kind of structural reforms to federal management that its architects had promised. Musk himself characterized the effort as “somewhat successful” during a December 2025 podcast appearance. The Dogecoin ques...