Musk and DOGE have ignited sharp criticism in recent days after their audits led Trump to take steps toward shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Trump administration claims the agency spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars on wasteful projects around the globe.

TRUMP ORDERING REVIEW OF ALL FEDERAL NGO FUNDING

Reports indicate Trump plans to house a significantly slimmer international development team within the State Department, with less than 300 of the more than 10,000 USAID employees being kept on by the government.

The president did not say during a Friday press conference if he had told Musk there are specific agencies or departments DOGE “cannot touch” but confirmed that an audit of the Pentagon would soon be underway.

“I’ll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they’re doing,” Trump stated. “I’ve instructed him to go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along, and they’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things.”

“I will pick out a target, and I say, ‘Go in,’” he continued. “There could be areas that we won’t, but I think everything’s fertile.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also indicated certain programs or projects could be cut in the future during his Friday townhall at the Pentagon with military personnel.

“There’s a lot of programs around here that we spend a lot of money on that, when you actually war game it, don’t have the impact you want them to,” he said. “One of the benefits I have is … I don’t have any special interests. I don’t have a background invested in any systems or services. I’m agnostic to that.”

The former Fox News host said he’s “prepared” to “take a lot of arrows,” in his effort to shake things up at the department.

“We need the best systems in the hands of war fighters,” Hegseth added.

The president claimed during his press conference that he wouldn’t touch Social Security benefits but acknowledged that Musk and his DOGE team can get access to taxpayers’ personal information and social security numbers quite easily.

“Why does DOGE need all of that?” a reporter asked Trump.

“It doesn’t, but they get it very easily,” Trump replied. “And we don’t have very good security in our country, and they get it very easily.”

Trump did throw his tacit support behind Marko Elez returning to work for DOGE. Elez, one of Musk’s 25-year-old “engineers” who had been working on the audits of federal offices, resigned earlier this week after his history of social media posts had been unearthed by news outlets.

Earlier on Friday, Vice President JD Vance said on X that Elez should be allowed to return to his work at DOGE.

“Well, I don’t know about the particular thing, but if the Vice President said that,” the president responded when asked about Elez’s resignation. “I’m with the Vice President.”

You can watch Trump’s comments in full below.

Mike Brest contributed to this report.