Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said former Trump adviser Elon Musk was “backward” in his efforts to cut government waste through the firings led by the U.S. DOGE Service, the latest example of a rift between the Trump administration and Musk since he left Washington.

Lutnick, in an interview published Friday with Axios co-founder Mike Allen, said Musk “got caught up in other people’s objectives,” suggesting the billionaire got ahead of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries in his efforts to slash the number of federal employees. Lutnick said that going forward he expects government-cutting efforts to focus more tightly on identifying waste rather than broad reductions to the workforce, which accounts for a relatively small percentage of government spending.

“The focus should ha

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