Former Obama speech writers praise Trump for creating DOGE

By 
 February 13, 2025

Former President Barack Obama has long had a contentious relationship with President Donald Trump and once mocked him at a White House Correspondents Dinner.

Yet despite the animosity, some of Obama's former staffers recently expressed grudging admiration for the current president. 

"We didn’t know you could do some of this"

According to the New York Post, those words of praise came from Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett, both of whom were speechwriters during the Obama administration.

The pair appeared earlier this week on the left-leaning podcast "Pod Save America" where they touted the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk.

"Honestly, some of this is pretty annoying because it’s some of the stuff we should’ve done. We didn’t know you could do some of this," Lovett said of DOGE's accomplishments.

Favreau agreed, remarking, "We all know that government is slow. We all know government can be inefficient. We all know that the bureaucracy can be bloated."

DOGE eliminates $101 million worth of DEI contracts

"We all worked in the f—ing White House. We tried to reorganize the government. We tried to find efficiency. It’s hard to do," the former speech writer acknowledged.

"The technology in the federal government, at least when we were there, sucked," he stressed. "There was no service in the basement of the West Wing. You couldn’t use your phone because there was no service."

DOGE drew attention this week when it announced that nearly $1 billion worth of contracts were being eliminated at the Department of Education.

As Breitbart reported, this included the cancellation of 29 grants for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) programs valued at $101 million.

Musk: "Your tax dollars were spent on this"

Among them was one program that "sought to train teachers to 'help students understand/interrogate the complex histories involved in oppression, and help students recognize areas of privilege and power on an individual and collective basis.'"

Musk went on to highlight the absurdity of such programs in a post on his personal X account, writing, "Your tax dollars were spent on this."

Meanwhile, DOGE also pointed to an instance in which a "contractor was paid $1.5 million to 'observe mailing and clerical operations' at a mail center."

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