Earlier this month, Musk criticized Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” before telling Fox News this week that “most of the federal spending is entitlements” and that it is “the big one to eliminate.” While the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency is correct concerning federal spending, he also claimed without offering proof during the same Monday interview that Social Security was “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.”

House Republicans’ position on entitlement programs was scrutinized last month after their budget resolution proposed deep cuts to mandatory spending. With Trump stating during last month’s Cabinet meeting that those reductions will not come from Medicare and Social Security, experts have warned they would come, for example, from Medicaid to meet spending targets.

A day after Musk’s comments on Fox News, Leavitt contended that “unfortunately, the mainstream media has taken Mr. Musk out of context.”

“What he was specifically referring to cutting was the waste and the fraud and abuse that does exist in these programs,” she said. “According to an IG report from the Social Security Administration, there’s more than $70 billion of fraud in the Social Security program alone that we know of, and so the president will continue to protect these programs for … hardworking Americans and actually cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse out of these programs will protect it for hardworking Americans.”

In the Fox News interview, Musk estimated he could decrease entitlement spending by $500 billion to $700 billion.

“It’s an estimate based on what he’s seen,” Leavitt said. “He’s not saying definitively. He’s saying that’s what DOGE suspects and thinks, and that’s exactly why DOGE was created: to ensure that we are investigating the fraudulent spending, the wasteful abuse across our federal government. And I would remind everybody in this room that 77% of the American people support this effort by Elon Musk and DOGE to identify such waste.”

Much of Tuesday’s briefing focused on the turbulence experienced by the stock market amid Trump’s tariff threats.

JUDGE FINDS DOGE WORKS IN ‘UNUSUAL SECRECY’ AND MUST COMPLY WITH RECORDS REQUESTS

“As President Trump has said, and I’m here to echo the remarks of this president, of this White House, we are in a period of economic transition,” Leavitt said. “We are in a period of transition from the mess that was created under Joe Biden in the previous administration. Joe Biden left this country in an economic disaster.”

The press secretary added: “Despite the globalist mainstream media’s attempts to worry consumers, President Trump will not repeat the trend of past American presidents who broke their promises to the American public.”