In a bombshell interview, Elon Musk revealed that corrupt leftist NGOs are at the heart of the fraud recently uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and that these organizations are taking taxpayer dollars and using them to create a vicious cycle of wasteful, corrupt spending.
For context, Mr. Musk, who was appointed as head of DOGE by President Trump in January, appeared on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast Verdict on April 19, 2025, to discuss DOGE’s recent findings in an interview that was nearly an hour long. The conversation focused on specific instances of wasteful and corrupt spending within the federal government, which Mr. Musk recounted to Sen. Cruz in detail.
In the interview, Mr. Musk explained to Sen. Cruz that some of the most egregious examples of waste uncovered by DOGE were easy to identify. Musk told the senator, “So, most of what DOGE is finding, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes. It’s very obvious. Basic stuff. So in every government department, I say every because we’ve not yet found a single exception. There are far too many software licenses and media subscriptions, meaning many more software licenses and media subscriptions than there are humans in the department.”
Responding, Sen. Cruz asked Mr. Musk to elaborate, and he continued, “The government was paying for these countless licenses and subscriptions, to which Musk replied, “Yes, the government was paying for thousands of licenses of software or media subscriptions, and no one had ever logged in even once.”
Musk continued, describing how the federal government employees had an absurd amount of agency-issued credit cards with high limits, explaining, “We found that there are twice as many credit cards [within federal agencies] as there are humans…and these are $10,000 credit cards. So it’s a lot of money.
Mr. Musk went on to describe the deeper issue with “so-called non-profit” organizations, which he said were “one of the biggest scam portholes we’ve uncovered.” He told Sen. Cruz, “The government can give money to a so-called non-profit with very few controls. And then there’s no auditing subsequently of that non-profit.”
Expounding, Musk explained to Sen. Cruz how this “scam porthole” allowed bureaucrats to get rich. Musk elaborated, “So this is with the 1.9 billion to Stacey Abrams. They then give themselves extremely lavish, like, insane salaries, expense everything to the non-profit, buy jets and homes, and all sorts of things.” Sen. Cruz, visibly shocked, said, “Live like kings and queens.”
"*" indicates required fields
When an excerpt from the interview was shared on X, conservatives sounded off in the comments section. One commenter with the handle Cool Christian Engineer wrote, “Elon’s spot on. Left-wing NGOs hate success, especially when it doesn’t rely on their taxpayer-funded scams.” Another user chimed in, “End all federal funding to NGOs. Do it now,” with a commenter adding, “Criminals hate being caught!”
Watch a clip from Sen. Cruz’s interview with Elon Musk:
Featured image credit: screenshot from the embedded video