Since President Trump took office, Elon Musk and DOGE have wielded an unprecedented level of power to help the administration cut the U.S. government, and they claim to have stopped tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending.

David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The Times, explains why those claims are not what they seem — and what that tells us about Mr. Musk’s project to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

Guest: David A. Fahrenthold, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• DOGE’s only public ledger has been riddled with mistakes.
• The group has now deleted hundreds of claimed savings, worth billions of dollars, from that ledger.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

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