"Let's check the military. We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of fraud and abuse. You know, the people elected me on that," Trump told Fox News in a pre-Super Bowl interview Sunday.
Trump said he would instruct Musk to assess the Department of Education for possible cutbacks and reforms and then the military would be next in line.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he welcomed scrutiny of his department's spending in the interest of getting value for American taxpayers.
"We know in a world where America's $37 trillion in debt, resources will not be unlimited, so every dollar we can find that isn't being spent wisely is one we can put toward a warfighter, so we welcome DOGE at DOD," Hegseth said.
"The president is right. He's setting the pace, and he is also correct that American taxpayers deserve to know exactly how and where their money is spent. The fact that I have to commit to an audit being done in four years is bad enough. The Pentagon should be able to pass a budget right now."
"We need to know when we spend dollars, we need to know where they're going and why that simple accounting and that has not existed at the Defense Department. We're going to fix that."
Trump's comments came amid an escalating power struggle over the extent of DOGE's jurisdiction, which, because it is unofficial, is not subject to oversight outside of the administration itself, with a series of legal challenges being mounted in federal court in an effort to rein in Musk and his team.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer on Saturday temporarily blocked DOGE's access to Treasury Department payment systems containing personal financial data of millions of U.S. citizens and ordered Musk and his team to destroy or delete copies they may be holding immediately.
The case against Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the Southern District of New York was brought by attorneys general from 19 Democratic states arguing DOGE's actions represented a "unique security risk" to the states and residents whose data was held in the system.
Engelmayer ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on the basis they would most likely be successful in proving that access to the payment systems was not legal and that sudden changes imposed by the Trump administration risked the disclosure of sensitive data and exposed the system to being hacked.
The judge blocked all access bar "civil servants with a need for access... who have passed all background checks and security clearances and all information security training" required by laws and regulations" through Feb. 14, ordering Bessent to respond by then.
A federal judge in Washington had previously ordered a block two key Musk allies embedded within the Treasury Department.
On Friday, a federal judge issued an emergency injunction blocking the Trump administration from slashing the U.S. Agency for International Development workforce to less than 300 essential staff, placing the other 2,200 on administrative leave starting midnight Friday.
The case brought by two labor unions representing USAID staff also won a seven-day stay of an order requiring U.S. staff of the agency overseas to return to the United States within 30 days or risk losing having the government pay their relocation costs.
The ruling cites the "irreparable harm" the workers would be exposed to by the original order.
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