A former DOGE official has published a defense of Elon Musk and the team in a Fox News opinion column. Tyler Hassen, author of a new book on DOGE, says his time inside was almost nothing like what he read in the news. Here is what he claims, and what audits and reporting have found.
Hassen, who served as the DOGE lead and acting assistant secretary at the Interior Department, wrote that staff asked officials to “defend the spend” and explain what was mission critical, and that contracts nobody could defend were cut. He also described Musk as so focused on the problem that he sometimes slept on the floor of a nearby office. The column ends by pointing out that the national debt problem still exists, Fox News published.
The column is opinion, and it comes as Hassen promotes a book on the subject, which he says launched last week. It is one view of DOGE, and the public record offers others.
What the audits found
DOGE’s website listed about $215 billion in estimated savings in January, WBUR noted. The Government Accountability Office reported on August 6 that 96% of DOGE’s claimed savings on federal grants could not be verified, Federal News Network reported. The report also found that some savings posted on the site were already being phased out before DOGE existed.
New York Times investigative reporter David Fahrenthold told WBUR that federal spending did not go down in the year DOGE was active. Musk had promised to cut $2 trillion. On the other side, Congress passed a $9 billion rescissions package that Reason said came directly from the DOGE effort.
For now, there are two accounts: a former insider describing a serious effort to question government spending, and an auditor saying much of the claimed savings cannot be confirmed. Readers can weigh both, and the sources are linked above.
