‘We will make mistakes’: Elon Musk casually admits DOGE ‘accidentally’ canceled Ebola prevention
During Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting, Elon Musk casually admitted that DOGE “accidentally” temporarily canceled Ebola prevention and suggested that similar mistakes will occur again.
It’s true that mistakes happen, though many Americans would debate whether mistakes as big as DOGE’s are understandable. Since Trump entered office, he has given DOGE free rein over the government, allowing it to dismantle entire departments and slash funding as it sees fit. Led by Musk and a team of young, inexperienced men, DOGE has gone about its duties extremely recklessly. The logical course of action would be to review everything in an ordered manner to decide which programs to cut and phase out slowly. Instead, DOGE’s method has been to dismantle departments, fire thousands of employees, slash programs without review, and simply hope for the best. As a result, it has accidentally fired hundreds of vital National Nuclear Security Administration workers and USDA employees working on the government response to bird flu, while its chaotic dismantling of USAID has risked lives around the world and millions in food waste.
In addition to all those mistakes, Musk recently admitted that he and his colleagues also disrupted Ebola prevention efforts.
Elon Musk discusses DOGE’s mistakes
During Trump’s cabinet meeting, Musk defended DOGE’s penchant for mistakes by insisting he fixes them quickly. He stated, “We will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect, but when we make mistakes, we’ll fix them very quickly.” However, his example of this phenomenon is hardly likely to reassure Americans. He explained, chuckling slightly, “For example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled, very briefly, was Ebola … Ebola prevention.” Musk appeared to be expecting to get a laugh out of the admission as he glanced toward Trump, but there was only dead silence in the room.
He continued, “I think we all want Ebola prevention. So, we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.” Musk insinuated that the mistakes were necessary because it was more important that DOGE works “quickly” to get to $1 trillion in savings by next year.
It’s quite a shocking admission. He admitted that DOGE disrupted Ebola prevention without Americans even being aware that this happened. Additionally, he provides little evidence to assure Americans that the brief cancelation didn’t cause any damage. The most shocking aspect is how casually he admitted to it. He thought it was funny and expected the rest of the cabinet to laugh, too. This really isn’t a matter of DOGE just not being “perfect” or making understandable “mistakes.” This is DOGE making completely reckless and inexcusable mistakes that suggest it’s incapable of doing its job.
One also can’t ignore the hypocrisy of the admission and Musk’s expectations that everyone brushes off DOGE’s mistakes, considering he has relentlessly mocked federal workers, accused them of “pretending” to work, forced them to defend their jobs to him, and laid off thousands of them with little cause. Shouldn’t he be held to the same standards he is holding federal workers, too? Does he really expect us to believe he’d laugh off a federal employee accidentally firing nuclear workers and disrupting Ebola prevention and dismiss it as a little mistake? Americans know he’d blast their mistake on X and use it as another excuse to purge the federal workforce.
There’s little evidence that DOGE will achieve its $1 trillion goal. Even if it does, Musk’s admission of recklessly canceling Ebola prevention raises the question of at what cost. DOGE’s supposed savings won’t matter if it ever fails to remedy one of its enormous mistakes before it’s too late.
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