Elon Musk said Tuesday that his Department of Government Efficiency aims to slash $1 trillion from the deficit.

“The overall goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit, and if the deficit is not brought under control, America will go bankrupt,” Mr. Musk said during a joint interview with President Trump on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

“A country is no different from an individual, in that if an individual overspends, an individual can go bankrupt, and so can a country,” the tech billionaire said. “And the massive waste, fraud and abuse that has been going on is leading to a $2 trillion year deficit. That’s what the president was handed on January 20th, a $2 trillion deficit.”

Mr. Trump said Mr. Musk’s team is already finding fraud and abuse among government contracts within federal agencies.

“We have contracts that go forever, and they’ve been going for years and they’re supposed to end in three months or five months or two years or something,” the president said. “So, the [contractor] is either crooked, where he knew this was going to happen, or he’s crooked because he’s getting payments that he knows he shouldn’t be getting but they’re finding things like that.”

Mr. Trump said Mr. Musk and his DOGE team are finding examples “far worse than that” worth billions of dollars.

“And there will be hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fraud,” he said.