Musk Clashes With Fox News Star Over DOGE Question

Elon Musk is being very forthright about whether or not DOGE employees are taking home a paycheck.

During a joint interview with President Donald Trump for Fox News on Tuesday, February 18, the tech mogul corrected journalist Sean Hannity when he implied people working on Musk's team to overhaul government spending were doing it for free.  
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"This is where we are as a society and I hate to do this to you, but I'm going to do it anyway. You're doing all of these things — your DOGE. Nobody at DOGE gets paid a penny, correct?" the right-wing news anchor asked Musk and the leader of the nation.
"Well, actually, some people are federal employees," the X, formerly known as Twitter, owner replied.
"Some are. Okay, they're helping," Hannity said while doing his best to justify Musk.

"But I think it's fair to say that the software engineers at DOGE could be earning millions of dollars a year and instead of earning a small fraction of that as federal employees," the billionaire said.
Trump chimed in to add, "They're very committed people."
The host then took a turn to numerous wide-ranging topics. "So, you're committed to helping the blind see, people with spinal cord injuries recover. You're committed to getting to Mars," Hannity implied. "You're committed to rescue — you're going to help rescue next month, two astronauts that I think were abandoned. They dispute that in an interview."

"At the president's request or instruction, we are accelerating the return of the astronauts, which was postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree," Musk said.
"They got left in space," The Apprentice star noted.
Elsewhere in the discussion, Musk opened up about his close bond with Trump. "I love the president. I just want to be clear about that," the SpaceX founder said. "I think President Trump is a good man. The president has been so unfairly attacked in the media, it's really outrageous."

Luckily, the feeling is mutual. "Well, I respect him," the commander-in-chief revealed of Musk. "I've always respected him. I never knew that he was right on certain things and I'm usually pretty good at this stuff."
As to why Trump handed his pal the reins at DOGE, he admitted, "I wanted to find somebody smarter than him."
"I searched all over. I just couldn't do it," he continued. "I couldn't. I really tried hard. I couldn't find anyone smarter."

When Hannity asked if Musk would ever be involved in something that would be a conflict of interest, Trump made clear, "I wouldn't want that and he wouldn't want it." 
In a previous sit-down, the Republican leader expressed how he knew the mogul was helping him and the country for the right reasons.
"Trust Elon? Oh, he's not gaining anything," Trump said in an interview earlier this month. "We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that."