By Vice President J.D. Vance acknowledged Friday that Elon Musk, head of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has made some important missteps while implementing large-scale federal workforce reductions. His remarks followed internal divisions within the Trump administration regarding the extent and speed of government downsizing.
During an interview with NBC News, the vice president showed a willingness to be self reflective of the administration’s mistakes.
“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.”
“I think some people clearly are collecting a check and not doing a job,” Vance said when asked about such comments from Musk. “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,” he added. “That doesn’t distract or detract from the fact that you do have a lot of great civil servants who are doing important work. 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 more measured tone stood in stark contrast to the aggressive strategy employed by Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, as he spearheads President Donald Trump’s initiative to drastically cut federal spending and overhaul the government bureaucracy.
Over the first seven weeks of Trump’s second term, Musk has made mass layoffs of thousands of federal employees the focal point of his efforts, a move that has already triggered lawsuits and judicial resistance. He has repeatedly dismissed federal workers as “fraudsters” unfit for their roles, reinforcing his stance that the government is plagued by inefficiency and waste.
Musk and his team have also aggressively pursued reductions in the federal workforce in an effort to streamline government operations. The strategy has been met with support from fiscal conservatives advocating for smaller government, while critics warn that abrupt dismissals could weaken essential public services and increase unemployment.
More recently, Musk held a “closed-door” meeting with GOP members of Congress “after lawmakers faced scrutiny in their home districts last month over DOGE’s fast-paced dismantling of government agencies.
Lawmakers leaving the meeting said that Mr. Musk, who spoke for about 15 minutes before taking questions for roughly an hour, acknowledged that there have been hiccups over the last few weeks since DOGE began taking a fine-tooth comb to the federal bureaucracy.
Some of the growing pains of Mr. Musk’s operation included reports of cancelling government contracts that were already cancelled, or mistakenly firing and then rehiring federal workers across a variety of agencies,” according to The Washington Times.
“He’s not trying to say that everything’s been done perfectly,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, South Dakota Republican told the newspaper. “I think he’s really open to the idea that when there have been things done that weren’t a perfect fit, that we need to come back and figure out how to adjust fire.”
DOGE’s restructuring is part of President Trump’s broader effort to curb what he views as an inefficient and bloated bureaucracy. As the administration moves forward, it remains uncertain whether adjustments to the process will be sufficient to address growing concerns among federal employees, labor unions, and policymakers who fear the long-term consequences of the layoffs.
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