Elon Musk has taken on an unexpected role as head of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Once again, Musk is making headlines.
On Thursday (February 20), he appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, where he was greeted with enthusiastic applause from attendees.
While this isn’t the kind of event he’s usually associated with, Musk—best known as the CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX—has recently shifted his focus to politics after being appointed to lead DOGE.
He’s also formed a close bond with President Trump, with the two even sitting down for a joint interview on Fox News in recent days.
At the conference, Musk took the stage wearing sunglasses and his signature black Make America Great Again hat, announcing that Argentina’s President Javier Milei had a gift for him.
Milei then walked onstage, presenting Musk with a red chainsaw engraved with his slogan, “Viva la libertad, carajo”, which translates roughly to “Long live liberty, damn it.”
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk declared, raising the prop in the air.
The gesture is believed to symbolize the deep government spending cuts Milei has enacted over the past month.
According to the DOGE website, the department claims to have saved $55 billion.
This amount was reportedly saved through “a combination of fraud detection and elimination, contract and lease cancellations or renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic adjustments, and regulatory savings.”
These cuts could potentially put as much as $5,000 back into taxpayers’ pockets.
Trump called the savings “incredible” and proposed that 20% of the total be returned to Americans, while another 20% would go toward paying down the national debt.
As of last week, the U.S. national debt stood at $36.22 trillion, according to Fiscal Data.
The site notes that over the last century, federal debt has surged from $395 billion in 1924 to $35.46 trillion in 2024.
This amount was reportedly saved through “a combination of fraud detection and elimination, contract and lease cancellations or renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic adjustments, and regulatory savings.”
These cuts could potentially put as much as $5,000 back into taxpayers’ pockets.
Trump called the savings “incredible” and proposed that 20% of the total be returned to Americans, while another 20% would go toward paying down the national debt.
As of last week, the U.S. national debt stood at $36.22 trillion, according to Fiscal Data.
The site notes that over the last century, federal debt has surged from $395 billion in 1924 to $35.46 trillion in 2024.