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By Doina Chiacu
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Billionaire Elon Musk said on Thursday many federal government agencies must be eliminated as part of President Donald Trump's push to radically overhaul the U.S. government.
"We do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind. Just leave part of them behind. It's easy. It's kind of like leaving a weed," Musk said in a video call addressing the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
"If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn't stop weeds from ever going back, but it makes it harder.
"So we have to really delete entire agencies, many of them."
The comments came as Musk this week has had to defend his role as an unelected official who has been granted unprecedented authority by the Republican president to dismantle parts of the U.S. government.
Since Trump took office on January 20, Musk has dispatched members of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to scrutinize sensitive personnel and payment information in government computer systems. Musk has led a successful drive to dismantle two agencies - one that provides a lifeline to the world's needy, USAID, and another that protects Americans from unscrupulous lenders, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Musk, the world's richest man, has disparaged civil servants as bureaucrats who are not elected and not held accountable to American taxpayers.
"We really have here rule of the bureaucracy, as opposed to rule of the people democracy. We want to restore rule of the people. And so what that means is reducing the size of the federal government, basically reducing regulation," Musk told the Dubai audience.
Trump has said Musk, the CEO of Spacex and Tesla who also owns X social media platform, will excuse himself from any conflicts of interest between his various business interests and his efforts to cut costs for the federal government
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
