Trump vows to cut billions of dollars from US defence spending

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Donald Trump said he would seek to cut billions of dollars from the Pentagon budget as the next big target in the effort led by Elon Musk to slash spending by US government agencies.

In an interview on Sunday, Trump backed Musk’s cost-cutting push through the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” even as it faces growing setbacks in federal courts and allegations from Democrats that it is exceeding its powers.

Trump said Musk had been “terrific” and a “great help” in scouring the federal government for possible spending cuts so far. He indicated that the defence department, which has an annual budget of about $800bn, would be next in the billionaire’s sights.

“Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said.

Musk’s potential role in scouring the Pentagon for savings has already raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, given that his companies SpaceX and its subsidiary Starlink have contracts with the government.

But Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, brushed off those worries in an interview with NBC. He said “all of the appropriate firewalls” would be in place to prevent any conflicts, though he did not offer further details.

“The American people have said enough, enough with the bloat and the waste and the debt,” Waltz said. “We do need great minds and we do need business leaders to go in there and absolutely reform the Pentagon’s acquisition process,” he said.

With Musk in a leading role, Trump’s second administration has moved aggressively to grind some federal programmes and agencies to a halt.

In one setback for Musk on Saturday, a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked his team’s effort to gain access to the US Treasury department’s payment data, saying it could lead to the disclosure of sensitive personal information that could cause “irreparable harm” to Americans.

Democrats have increasingly been crying foul.

“This is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate,” Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, told ABC on Sunday.

“The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy,” he added.

The hardest hit federal agencies include USAID, which administers foreign aid, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose employees were told on Saturday by its acting director Russell Vought to cease virtually all of their activities, including investigations and supervision. Trump has also vowed to eliminate the Department of Education, which has long been a target of conservative ire.

Republicans in Congress have stood by Trump and Musk as they have moved to halt a wide range of federal programmes, even though the push has undermined the constitutional role of lawmakers in authorising spending.

Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, said on ABC that the Trump administration needed to take a “critical view” of US spending policies because the country’s fiscal path was “unsustainable”. But he also said Musk could be moving more artfully.

“He needs to, in a more professional way, communicate with the American public,” Turner said.