Bill Maher calls out Elon Musk, DOGE for not taking 'chainsaw' to defense spending

"Real Time" host Bill Maher closed his show Friday night by calling out Elon Musk and DOGE for not taking a chainsaw to find massive cuts in military spending. 

Maher began by playing a clip of President Donald Trump, who suggested last month his administration would find "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse" in the military, juxtaposing those comments to the Department of Defense's announcement this week of cutting $580 million from its $900 billion budget, far below the figures Trump floated. 

"When they were talking about shrinking the government, I said, ‘Yeah, great, but the acid test will be if they go after the biggest bloat of all: obsolete weapons programs," Maher explained. The HBO host then quoted from Musk's X postings last November when he said, "Please, in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program."

"Exactly your X-cellence," Maher quipped. 

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"But today, Trump announced we're building a new fighter jet, the F-47… So what happened to fighter jets being obsolete in the age of drones," Maher jabbed the tech billionaire. He added, "Because I feel like you guys are purposefully avoiding the elephant in the room. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, the two trillion in waste that you originally said you could cut. Yeah, you're not going to get there by firing mailmen and the guy who tells you to not lean over the rail at the Grand Canyon."

The HBO host called out DOGE's "$35 billion" in savings so far but has left the "fattest target to hunt" "unmolested across the Potomac at the Pentagon, a place Eisenhower warned us was out of control in 19-f---ing-61!"

He then cited the $6.8 trillion in the 2024 federal budget and had a pie chart showing defense spending made up 47% of the $1.8 trillion in discretionary spending, with every other department in single digits. 

"You mean there's barely a penny of waste in this half?" Maher pointed to the 47%. "I may not know how to code like Elon's nerd brigade, but I could read a f---ing pie chart."

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives of Elon Musk for comment. 

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"It's amazing. The right and the left in this country despise each other, but they do agree on two things. One, keep an eye on the Jews because they're always up to something," Maher quipped. "And two, the defense budget is always perfect, like the Virgin Mary. In fact, it's always okay if it gets bigger. It's like a fat Virgin Mary."

Maher went on to show that U.S. defense spending is "higher than the next nine countries combined" and cited a 2017 Pentagon study acknowledging it had "19%" more bases globally than it needs. 

"Wouldn't it be ‘efficient’ to close some of those, the 750 bases in 80 countries we have around the world? We need every one? No place to fire up the old chainsaw there?" Maher asked. "The Air Force has 51 golf courses. The Marines have ten. Guam has two. Nothing? No vroom, vroom for that?"

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He also took aim at the Department of Homeland Security, which he called the dictionary definition of "bloated bureaucracy" and a "Frankenstein monster born in the panic after 9/11." 

"So far, DOGE has cut 50 million out of its $170 billion budget. You know, every other part of government has to tighten its belt. How about the part that makes me take mine off at the airport?" Maher said. "It's been over 20 years of this bulls---. We started doing it before there were smartphones or AI. I'm guessing there's a better way to keep this safe than everybody undressing in public." 

"No one thinks you need your picture taken to fly from Tulsa to Spokane. It's not 9/11 anymore. It's 2025. And I'm not afraid of hijackers. I'm afraid of the plane," he added.