SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency was only "a little bit successful", Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on a podcast on Tuesday, adding that he would not lead the project again.
The billionaire, who is founder of electric car company Tesla, was a major donor to Trump's presidential election campaign and became a close ally and adviser to his administration.
Musk led the DOGE team in seeking to slash the federal government's budget and workforce
in the first five months of Trump's second term.
But the role and his political rhetoric sparked a backlash against him and Tesla, including vandalism of Tesla cars.
"I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies. And they wouldn't have been burning the cars," Musk said on the podcast with former Trump administration official Katie Miller.
"We were a little bit successful. We were somewhat successful. We stopped a lot of funding that really just made no sense, that was entirely wasteful," Musk said.
Asked if he would go back and lead DOGE again, Musk said: "No, I don't think so."
Musk's work for DOGE also sparked concerns among investors that he was not paying enough attention to Tesla as it faced slowing sales.
Musk and Trump had a bitter public falling out around midyear over the president's sweeping tax and spending bill. But there have been some signs of reconciliation.
DOGE has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, the Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month. DOGE claimed to have slashed tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, but it was impossible for outside financial experts to verify that because the unit did not provide detailed public accounting of its work.
(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
