Washington: United StatesVice President Vance admitted that Elon Musk has made mistakes while carrying out mass firings of federal employees.
Speaking on Friday, March 14, Vance acknowledged that while the job cuts were a key part of Trump’s plan to slash government spending, not every decision was handled correctly.
“Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake. I’m accepting of mistakes,” Vance said in an interview.
He emphasized that errors must be corrected quickly and noted that not all federal employees deserve to be fired. “There are a lot of good people who work in the government—a lot of people who are doing a very good job,” he said. “We want to try to preserve as much of what works in government as possible while eliminating what doesn’t work.”
For the past seven weeks, Musk has led an aggressive push to cut thousands of federal jobs, implementing Trump’s plan to overhaul the government.
The mass layoffs have triggered lawsuits, resistance from judges, and outrage from workers who suddenly found themselves unemployed. Musk, who has been overseeing the effort, has repeatedly dismissed government employees as “fraudsters” who aren’t doing their jobs.
Vance distanced himself from those sweeping accusations. “I think some people clearly are collecting a check and not doing a job,” he said. “Now, how many people is that? I don’t know, in a 3 million-strong federal workforce, whether it’s a few thousand or much larger than that.”
Despite supporting the firings, Vance made it clear that not everyone deserved to lose their job.
“However big the problem is, it is a problem when people are living off the generosity of the American taxpayer in a civil service job and not doing the people’s business,” he said.
But he also defended those who actually show up and do their work. “You do have a lot of great civil servants who are doing important work,” he said.
“I think most of those great civil servants would say we want to be empowered to do our job. We don’t want the person who doesn’t show up five days a week to make it harder for us to do what we need to do.”
While Vance toured a plastics factory in Bay City, Michigan, his arrival was met with middle fingers and vulgar signs from protesters. Some held up signs with messages like “Go home, scumbag” as his motorcade passed through. The night before, he was booed at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Even in his own neighborhood in Ohio, he was confronted by pro-Ukraine demonstrators while walking with his 3-year-old daughter.
“The thing at the Kennedy Center I thought was funny,” Vance said. “The thing by my house I thought was kind of annoying. I think you just kind of take the good with the bad.”
Inside the factory, Vance was welcomed by a pro-Trump crowd filled with local Republicans. He spoke about Trump’s plans to rebuild American manufacturing and boost the economy. But he also warned that the process wouldn’t be immediate. “Now I have to be honest with you,” Vance said. “The road ahead of us is long, but we are already, in just seven short weeks, starting to see early indications of the president’s vision becoming our shared American reality.”
Recent polls paint a different picture. A CNN poll showed that 56% of adults disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy. A Quinnipiac University poll found that 54% of registered voters share that disapproval. At the same time, Trump’s push for tariffs on foreign goods has sparked fears of a trade war that could drive up prices for consumers.
Vance has played a major role in shaping Trump’s foreign policy, delivering a fiery speech last month at the Munich Security Conference where he criticized European leaders over free speech and mass migration. In the Oval Office, he clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of being ungrateful for U.S. financial and military aid.
“I just try not to be overly scripted,” Vance said. “The classic thing to do in Munich would have been to show up and give a speech about NATO or give a speech about where the Ukraine-Russia thing was at that moment in time, and just sort of thought to myself, like, ‘What is it that I think is really important to say?’”
Meanwhile, Trump stirred speculation about Vance’s political future. In a recent interview, Trump said it was “too early” to talk about Vance as a possible successor in 2028. Asked if he had plans to run for president, Vance dismissed the idea, saying his only focus is doing his job now.
