Elon Musk is a dedicated patriot. I interviewed Mr. Musk on Monday in the Indian Treaty Room at the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House.

He was open, honest, transparent, and committed to preventing this country from falling deeper into an entitlement state that will wind up in bankruptcy.

He has been subjected to extraordinary criticism from Democrats and their left-wing allies.

But President Trump time and again has given Mr. Musk his full and complete backing.

And although Mr. Musk is not really a political man, he understands perfectly well that the entitlement state — which is shot through with waste, fraud, and corruption — is essentially the Democratic party feeding at the taxpayer trough — and attracting illegal immigrants. 

“I mean, the waste report and entitlement spending, which is all of the which is most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Mr. Musk explains, “so that that’s like the big one to eliminate. Yes.” 

He adds: “That’s the sort of half trillion, maybe six, 700 billion a year. that is also a mechanism by which the, Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants, by essentially paying them, to, to come here and then turning them into voters.”

Spot-on analysis from a non-politician.

And Mr. Musk is a man on a mission.

I asked him if he heard a call to action. Here’s what he said: “I mean, really, I just don’t want America to go bankrupt.” When I asked if it was a “call to action,” he replied: “Yeah. The real wakeup call for me was looking at that, seeing that the interest payments, the national debt exceeded the Defense Department budget.” 

Mr. Musk added that this means “if we didn’t do something about this, then there wouldn’t be any money for anything. We’ll just be servicing debt.”

Mr. Musk’s team numbers 100 so far — but he intends to drive it up to 200.

Their audit has already spread to most of the federal agencies according to Mr. Musk — something I didn’t realize.

He’s got a website — DOGE.gov — which ensures the total transparency of his operation.

If you want to look under the hood at what Mr. Musk and his team are doing, just go to his website — where they are reporting line by line every contract they cancel, every lease they tear up, and score each agency based on how much they’ve cut.

As he said to me, if you disagree with our recommendations, just tell us exactly which line you object to.

We’ve had government audits before.

For example, the Government Accountability Office last year did an audit that estimated over $500 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse. But no one ever actually acted on this.

Mr. Musk is aiming for $1 trillion. And the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told me that the DOGE savings will be implemented into a package of rescissions that will strike out Congressional authorizations — an action that needs only simple majorities in the House and Senate in order to enact.

Mr. Musk told me he’s acting as a consultant to the Cabinet secretaries throughout the government.

Just recently, Secretary Rubio adopted over 80 percent of the DOGE recommendations to cancel most of the United States Agency for International Development.

And here’s the thing: Mr. Musk has taken tremendous criticism, undoubtedly because Democrats and their allies don’t want to lose their foothold in the permanent ultra-liberal bureaucracy that Mr. Musk is tearing down.

As Mr. Musk puts it: “So the President is the elected representative of the people. And if the president cannot get things implemented as a reflection of the will of the people, then what we have is not a democracy. We have a bureaucracy.”

Meanwhile, his life has been threatened on the internet, several of his electric charging stations have been set on fire, at least one Tesla dealership got shot up by bullets — though fortunately no one was there at the time. Other Tesla dealerships have been subjected to protests and demonstrations.

Even he acknowledges that his businesses have probably suffered, while he spends his time in the White House — but he remains committed.

He told me he was going to go at least another year, maybe longer.

And then, finally, I put a question to him that had nothing to do with DOGE: “Can you rescue the astronauts?” 

Mr. MUSK replied: “Yes, we’re bringing them back in a few weeks.” 

There’s not nearly enough attention being paid to this, I told him. So can he get them back? 

“We’re gonna get them back,” Mr. Musk averred. 

“God Bless,” was my reply. Wow. A dedicated patriot, indeed.

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.