President Donald Trump Claims He Couldn't 'Find Anyone Smarter' Than Elon Musk to Run DOGE: 'He's an Amazing Person'

President Donald Trump revealed he initially looked all over for "somebody smarter" than Tesla billionaire Elon Musk to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

However, the commander-in-chief claimed he couldn't find anyone better to head the cost-cutting initiative.

During a joint interview with Musk on Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump reflected on what exactly attracted him to the owner of SpaceX.

"You know, I wanted to find somebody smarter than him," Trump confessed to Hannity while Musk was sitting inches away from him in the White House. "I searched all over. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't. We settled on this guy. But the team we have is really unbelievable. Those executive orders, I sign them, and now they get passed on to him and his group and other people, and they're all getting done. We're getting them done."

DOGE is charged with reducing government expenses and trimming U.S. bureaucracy.

The plan is to save between $2 and $3 trillion, and the task has begun with a massive offer of incentivized redundancies, which some 75,000 officials have accepted, along with the dismissal of tens of thousands of public employees.

Musk has been heavily criticized for leading the charge and essentially turning the U.S. government upside down despite no one electing him to do so.

Several judges have tried to stop the billionaire and his initiatives in the courts, and he has faced accusations from some media outlets and legal experts that he is “provoking a constitutional crisis.”

The president indicated one of his primary goals heading into his second term in the Oval Office was to find "great people" to staff his administration. He claimed he only knew Musk "a little bit" before last year but admired how the tech guru "fought hard" in the private sector.

"I wanted great people. And he’s a great person. He’s an amazing person. He’s also a caring person," Trump said.

"He’s a good person, a very good person, and he wants the country to do well," the president went on, asserting that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any DOGE decisions where he might have a conflict of interest.

"If there’s a conflict, he won’t be involved," Trump declared. "I mean, I wouldn’t want that, and he wouldn’t want it."

Later in the interview, Musk recounted how his friendship with the U.S. president has affected his life.

"I used to be adored by the left, you know," he said. "Less so these days."

He also brought up how, during a friend's birthday in Los Angeles, "I happened to mention the president’s name, and it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained, like, methamphetamine and rabies," he explained. "You just can’t have a normal conversation. And it’s like they become completely irrational."