Vice President JD Vance said Friday that Elon Musk, leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, has made “mistakes” when carrying out mass layoffs of federal employees.
“Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake. I’m accepting of mistakes,” Vance said in an interview with NBC News.
“I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes. But I’m also very aware of the fact that there are a lot of good people who work in the government — a lot of people who are doing a very good job. And we want to try to preserve as much of what works in government as possible, while eliminating what doesn’t work,” he added.
The Trump administration’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has carried out mass firings of federal workers in an attempt to slim the federal government. However, some have raised concerns about the mass layoffs being unethical, increasing unemployment, and harming the function of key government agencies.
DOGE has slashed the workforce at the Internal Revenue Service, Central Intelligence Agency, Interior Department, and many other agencies. Musk has referred to some federal workers as “fraudsters” who can’t be trusted to do their jobs.
When asked about Musk’s comments, Vance said, “I think some people clearly are collecting a check and not doing a job. Now, how many people is that? I don’t know, in a 3 million-strong federal workforce, whether it’s a few thousand or much larger than that.”
“However big the problem is, it is a problem when people are living off the generosity of the American taxpayer in a civil service job and not doing the people’s business,” Vance said. “That doesn’t distract or detract from the fact that you do have a lot of great civil servants who are doing important work.”
He added, “But I think most of those great civil servants would say we want to be empowered to do our job. We don’t want the person who doesn’t show up five days a week to make it harder for us to do what we need to do.”
Vance’s comments come after reports of a heated Cabinet meeting where Musk clashed with several Cabinet members over efforts to make agency cuts.
For instance, Musk accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of failing to cut enough staff at the state department, the New York Times reported. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Musk also reportedly went back and forth over whether DOGE tried to lay off air traffic controllers in the Federal Aviation Administration.