Donald Trump brushes off Elon Musk's disappointment over Tax Bill spending, says, ‘have to get a lot of votes’

US President Donald Trump brushed off criticism from billionaire donor and adviser Elon Musk regarding the cost of his flagship tax bill, telling reporters Wednesday that certain compromises were necessary to ensure the legislation's passage.

“Number one, we have to get a lot of votes,” Trump said. “We can’t be cutting — you know, we need, we need to get a lot of support.”

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Elon Musk, who headed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to reduce federal spending, expressed his frustration in an interview with CBS News.

He said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”

Musk’s comments echo some fiscal hawks who have argued that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — which pairs new tax cuts with an increase to military and border spending — could add trillions to the deficit.

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“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both,” Musk said.

The bill narrowly cleared the House last week, but it is anticipated to undergo substantial revisions in order to gain the backing of the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

“We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump said. “That’s the way they go.”

The president said ultimately the legislation was worth it because of “the level of tax cutting that we’re going to be doing.”

In a separate interview with the Washington Post, Elon Musk expressed frustration that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency he led, had become a scapegoat for criticism.

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“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said at the Starbase launch site in Texas ahead of SpaceX’s latest launch on Tuesday.

“Whenever something goes wrong anywhere, we get blamed even if we have nothing to do with it.”

He also remarked, “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. I knew there were problems, but trying to improve things in D.C. is definitely an uphill battle, to say the least.”

(With inputs from agencies)