BURSTSen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a recent interview that Americans should be saying “thank you” to tech billionaire Elon Musk for his work advising the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on how to cut wasteful spending and overhaul the federal workforce.
“I think the American people ought to be saying to Elon, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He came and spent four months working for the American people free of charge," Cruz told Fox News's Sean Hannity on Wednesday evening. "Didn't collect a salary, made nothing. He rooted out massive waste, fraud and abuse, and he did so at enormous cost to himself."
“You look at his stock holdings, his stock holdings dropped tens of billions of dollars. It was a personal sacrifice, and the death threats that were directed against him were massive," the Texas Republican added. "I think Elon is an extraordinary entrepreneur and extraordinary business leader."
Musk, a close ally of Trump, thanked the president earlier Wednesday as his status as a special government employee is set to expire on Friday.
“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022. “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”
The billionaire, who also owns SpaceX and Tesla, was limited to working 130 days as a special adviser overseeing DOGE, the commission that spearheaded tens of thousands of federal worker layoffs and was on the front lines of the Trump administration's effort to effectively dismantle agencies — such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and Education Department — in hopes of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse.
Musk has strongly backed Trump during the 2024 presidential election and throughout the first few months of the president’s second White House term. But earlier this week, he expressed displeasure with the makeup of the House GOP's “big, beautiful" spending package, which includes much of Trump's legislative agenda, including a raise in the debt limit.
He argued that certain provisions in the bill run counter to what DOGE focused on during the first few months of 2025.
“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS, which is set to air in full on Sunday.
Trump, when asked about Musk's criticism on Wednesday, defended the GOP's megabill, but acknowledged that he does dislike some parts of it.
“We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it. That’s the way it goes," Trump said to reporters. "It’s very big, it’s the big, beautiful, but the beautiful is because of all the things that we have."