CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Praises Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Says DOGE May Deliver a ‘Central Republican Promise’

CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria praised Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy for their plan to cut federal spending, which he said “desperately needs reform and realignment.”

During his show Sunday, Zakaria argued that “a good deal of the fury that’s been created” among Republicans comes from conservative politicians failing to cut U.S. federal spending — and he believes Musk and Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency can be the first to follow. through.

“With DOGE, we can finally make an attempt to fulfill the central Republican promise of the last 70 years,” Zakaria said. “And we’ll find out what America thinks about it.”

Of President-elect Donald Trump’s recent announcements, Zakaria said DOGE — which is not actually a government agency but will advise the White House — is what “excites” him the most.

He said Musk and Ramaswamy are “both excellent, and the federal government has clearly become too stretched and its writing too heavy.”

Zakaria said there are more than 180,000 pages of federal regulations, so “it’s probably worth taking a close look and pulling back a lot.”

However, Musk and Ramaswamy have not been tasked with an easy feat. Although Washington can be inefficient, much of what the government does is “write checks with great efficiency,” Zakaria said.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and other government programs make up roughly 60% of the federal budget, and Trump has promised to protect most of that spending, Zakaria said.

The “untouchable” Defense Department accounts for more than $800 billion of the federal budget, he said.

The remaining 15% of the federal budget includes items such as spending on veterans’ benefits and roads and highways.

“To achieve the $2 trillion in spending cuts that Musk has often talked about, he would have to eliminate all spending and all Pentagon spending, and then there would still be work to do,” he said. Zakaria.

“But I support the drive for reform, and not just because I think it will force greater control and efficiency on government, which needs it. “The pair will also force the country, and especially the Republican Party, to face a reality that has been bouncing around for decades,” he said.

That reality is the long-broken promise by moderate Republicans to repeal Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and slash government spending.

The CNN anchor nodded to Dwight Eisenhower, the next Republican in the White House after Roosevelt, who embraced the New Deal. And Richard Nixon, who even expanded it, creating the Environmental Protection Agency and proposing some form of universal health care.

These Republican presidents “enraged” conservative voters who wanted a dramatic reduction in federal spending, Zakaria said.

Although he praised Musk for his ambition, he noted the irony involved in the Tesla and SpaceX founder cutting the federal budget.

“Ramaswamy and Musk have both taken to posting a clip of economist Milton Friedman on their social media in which he argues for a very limited role for the federal government,” Zakaria said. “Ironically, that role would not appear to include any support for things like electric vehicles and civilian space programs, which have helped make much of Elon Musk’s fortune.”

Some of Musk’s companies have benefited from government spending. Over the past 16 years, its deals with the government total nearly $16 billion, according to federal contracting records.

Zakaria also argued that while it is fair to say that the US debt level is “on an unsustainable path,” a dramatic cut in federal spending “will almost certainly cause an economic downturn.”