Elon Musk wants everyone to know that he’s a different man from the one who was serving in the Trump administration earlier this week.
In a pre-taped interview with CBS Sunday Morning that took place while Musk was still serving under Donald Trump, the SpaceX head bristled at mentions of the Trump administration’s policies and tried to steer the conversation toward his rocket business. Musk brushed off questions from CBS’ David Pogue about Trump’s tariffs and the Department of Homeland Security’s attempted crackdown on foreign students before attempting to set terms.
“I think we want to stick to the subject of the day, which is, like, spaceships as opposed to presidential policy,” Musk said.
“I was told anything’s good,” Pogue shot back.
“No…well, no,” Musk said.
Pogue eventually got Musk to talk about his time in government, letting the billionaire on how “unfair” he was treated after taking a chainsaw to significant portions of the federal government. The world’s richest man, whose lay-offs and buy-out programs cut more than 25,000 federal employees, took offense at becoming “the whipping boy” for government cuts.
“If there was some cut, real or imagined, everyone would blame DOGE,” Musk said, before admitting that he does want to heavily reduce government spending. “I’m like a proponent of smaller government, not bigger government. So, now if somebody’s a proponent of, you know, more government programs and bigger government, and they see, ‘Hey, DOGE is cutting all these government programs,’ then they’ll be fundamentally opposed to that because they just think the government should do more things.”
Watch the entire interview below:
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