Elon Musk Reveals the 9% Cut That Changed EVERYTHING: “The Matrix Was Reprogrammed”

[Conservative Angle]

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Elon Musk remains every bit the lightning rod he’s always been.

But love him or hate him, right now both he and President Trump are celebrating a huge win from DOGE’s push to take out the government trash.

Besides the goal of cutting waste and digging up the corruption in the system…

Elon’s push to drastically shrink the size of the federal government in keeping with President Trump’s campaign promises can now officially be added to the “PROMISES MADE, PROMISED KEPT” column.

According to Musk, this one statistic — which he recently reposted on X — represented the fulfillment of something he has been talking about for a LONG TIME:

REPROGRAMMING THE MATRIX.

And if things continue in the same direction, we’re on a trajectory that could soon see the US federal workforce drop below what it was in the late 1960’s!

Check out this graph initially shared by Jordan Lasker, a data and analytical researcher who operates the popular X account known as Crémieux — which Elon reposted with comment:

The matrix was reprogrammed https://t.co/Qrnq0Kd8Kq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2025

That represents an approximate 9% REDUCTION in the size of the federal government in terms of employees.

But more than that, I want to point out that long before DOGE became a thing…

Long before President Trump won in November, 2024…

Elon was already talking about REPROGRAMMING THE MATRIX, and imagined it looking exactly like a huge reduction in the size of the federal government!

Check out this short clip that pre-dates President Trump’s 2024 win by a full 3 months:

That’s the clip that sprung to my mind when I saw Elon’s post touting that “the matrix was reprogrammed”.

Even back then, Elon was imagining a government efficiency agency as “attacking the matrix”.

Ultimately (based on the incomplete early information we now have…) the government shrank by nearly 300,000 people as a direct result of DOGE, as covered in this report from the New York Post:

Tech titan Elon Musk celebrated the year-end success of his efforts to slash the federal workforce, as data show a nearly 9% reduction in the federal workforce that once employed more than 3 million people.

“The matrix was reprogrammed,” the former Department of Government Efficiency chief tweeted, highlighting a graph made by Cato Institute economics researcher Krit Chanwong and institute vice president for policy Alex Nowrasteh.

The libertarian think-tank reported in a blog post that “a decline that large has not happened since the military demobilizations at the end of World War II and the Korean War.”

Bureau of Labor Statistics data maintained online by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank show that there were 2.744 million federal workers as of November, down from 3.015 million in January when Musk kicked off his chainsaw-wielding DOGE initiative when President Trump re-entered office.

The roughly 271,000 people who exited federal roles include about 154,000 who took buyouts and others who were cut through a series of scorched-earth mass-terminations that hit agencies such as the now-eliminated formerly 10,000-man USAID.

The civilian workforce has not been less than 2.7 million since 1966 — when the US population was 42% smaller than it is today — meaning that further reductions in Trump could set 60-year lows next year. (Emphasis added.)

Did you catch that last part I highlighted in bold?

Through DOGE and Elon Musk, President Trump has almost succeeded in reducing the size of the federal government in terms of number of employees to the point that it was at when the overall population of the United States was 42% smaller than it is today.

That has to be one of the greatest UNDER RECOGNIZED wins of his Presidency so far!

But honestly, there’s an even greater related statistic that came out of the same recent jobs report that President Trump touted yesterday.

How about 1.9 million American-born US citizens now have jobs as compared to when he took the oath of office in January?

ALL in the private sector!

Check out this clip of the President talking about those related numbers:

"1.9 million more American-born workers are employed today than when I took office," says @POTUS.

"Under Biden, 1 out of every 4 new jobs went to increase the size of the federal government… Under my administration, 100% of all new jobs created came out of the private sector." pic.twitter.com/28MbVJB3NZ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 19, 2025

Here’s the full screen version of that video for easier viewing:

“1.9 million more American-born workers are employed today than when I took office,” says @POTUS.

“Under Biden, 1 out of every 4 new jobs went to increase the size of the federal government… Under my administration, 100% of all new jobs created came out of the private sector.” pic.twitter.com/28MbVJB3NZ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) November 19, 2025

Keep in mind — those 1.9 million jobs weren’t created by expanding the government.

They were created IN SPITE of SHRINKING the federal government!

Of course, not everything is visibly heading in the right direction.

Spending is actually INCREASING; although that is admittedly part of the long-term plan put forward by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans.

I have to admit, that still bothers me. But I do understand that sometimes you have to FUND a turnaround long enough to keep from stalling out.

Obviously, Elon didn’t repost the statistics put forward by some of the folks at the CATO Institute that highlighted those trends.

But in the interest of bringing you the good, the bad, and the possibly ugly… here are those numbers from the federal SPENDING angle:

"DOGE did not reduce spending, but it did reduce federal employment by nine percent in less than 10 months." https://t.co/Gy4D52LQhC via @CatoInstitute @AlexNowrasteh pic.twitter.com/vFflFJ14mX

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) December 18, 2025

And here’s more on that side of the coin according to another excerpt from the same previously referenced New York Post article:

Musk, who recently rekindled his relationship with Trump after a bitter falling out in June, did not celebrate a less-flattering assessment made by the Cato scholars: that DOGE’s work didn’t result in lower federal spending.

In fact, federal spending was higher each month of Trump’s first year back in office than under former President Joe Biden, Chanwong and Nowrasteh found by analyzing Treasury Department monthly statements.

The US government has spent $7.6 trillion in 2025 as of November, according to the report, topping $7.412 trillion spent by Biden in the same period in 2024 and exceeding the Democrat’s spending rates in 2023 ($6.5 trillion), 2022 ($6.27 trillion) and 2021 ($6.5 trillion).

At least some of the explanation for the higher spending comes from elevated interest rates, which ratcheted higher in 2022 due to soaring inflation and that have slowly trended downward.

Trump has vowed to appoint a new Federal Reserve chairman in May who will further cut interest rates, saying publicly it would save the government a fortune due to the fact that 17% of federal spending goes toward serving the national debt.

“DOGE failed to cut spending because most federal spending was for entitlement programs where spending remains high due to structural reasons and policy autopilot,” the experts wrote. “Congress alone has the authority to cut these programs, so it’s unsurprising that DOGE did not reduce spending.” (Emphasis added.)

As I highlighted in bold, that rise in spending wasn’t PURELY because of the massive “Big Beautiful Bill”.

It takes a lot of airspace to turn around an enormous jetliner hurling through the air at hundreds of miles an hour.

I don’t know if that means higher spending numbers should get an automatic pass by those of us who consider ourselves conservatives.

But at the same time, the reality of the complications in Washington are NOTABLY part of the problem.

Hence… why Elon Musk’s reference to “reprogramming the matrix” rings so TRUE and MEANINGFUL to me, in terms of tangibly shrinking the raw number of federal employees.

Either way you cut it, from a conservative standpoint, that’s a WIN. And a BIG ONE at that!

You can actually hear Elon philosophizing along those same lines back in the early days of DOGE.

Check out this clip when he sat down with Joe Rogan in March, and again… framed shrinking the government as “reprogramming the matrix”:

The jobs report where the majority of these statistics became clear came out this past week.

And as already alluded to, those numbers may be even more sizable than we know simply because the shutdown created issues with reporting those numbers that haven’t been fully accounted for.

That fragmented data has already been highlighted by Fed Chair Jerome Powell who argues that it makes this job report less weighty for the Fed’s current decision-making on interest rates, as reported by The Blaze:

Following some significant delays due to the Democrat-imposed government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has finally released its long-anticipated jobs report for November and October.

On Tuesday, the November jobs report, including partial data from October, was released, showing an unemployment rate at 4.6%, up 0.2 percentage points since September 2025 and up 0.4 percentage points since November of last year.

Most of the jobs lost came from the federal government as part of DOGE’s buyout program, which went into effect at the end of September. Government employees who opted into the buyout were still listed as employed until their scheduled exit in October.

The new report was originally scheduled to be released on December 5, but the release was delayed due to the 43-day government shutdown which affected data collection for both October and November.

Kay Haigh, global co-head of fixed income and liquidity solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told Fox News: “Chair [Jerome] Powell commented last week that the report would likely be affected by shutdown-related distortions, making it a less reliable gauge of the labor market’s health than usual. The report on December’s employment data, released in early January ahead of the next meeting, will likely be a much more meaningful indicator for the Fed when it comes to deciding the near-term trajectory.”

The jobs report for December is set to be published on January 9.

President Trump is continuing his push for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to get more aggressive with lower interest rates.

Things might therefore get explosive after the more accurate January 9th jobs report drops.

With the federal government shrinking…

Nearly 2 million more Americans holding private sector jobs than this time last year…

And President Trump on the verge of his second year in the White House for his current term…

Jerome Powell might find himself under so much pressure from SUCCESSIVE TRUMP WINS that he has no choice but to agree with the President and LOWER INTEREST RATES.

Watch for President Trump to find a renewed focus on that front after the first of the year, as that more accurate jobs report drops.

And we’ll be sure to bring you all the angles as it plays out.

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