President Donald Trump praised Elon Musk for opening "a lot of eyes" through DOGE's cost-cutting mission, calling the multi-billionaire entrepreneur a "real patriot" for "paying a price" to get the job done.

"This is something that's really not good for him, and yet he's doing it," Trump said in a "Sunday Morning Futures" exclusive interview that aired this week. "But he's opened a lot of eyes."

Musk has stood at the helm of DOGE since its inception before Trump took office on Jan. 20. Since Trump's second term began, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has pinpointed allegedly wasteful contracts, grants, aid and other avenues of spending and sought to eliminate major swaths of the federal workforce to streamline government function. 

The moves have faced considerable resistance from critics, many of whom are Democrats.

Protests have emerged at Tesla dealerships, Tesla car owners have faced vandalism, and some protesters have even targeted electric vehicle charging stations due to the controversy. 

Trump, meanwhile, lauded Musk for doing, in his words, an "unbelievable" job to eliminate waste and improve efficiency.

"He's found hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fake contracts, and I read just a tiny portion of them the other night – [things like] transgender surgery on mice…. the money they're spending on all of this stuff. The whole thing's a scam, and you'll find, ultimately, that the money that they sent comes back to a lot of the people that made those deals. You're going to find that," he said.

"What he's also done is made people realize how many people should be cut, because normally you go in, and you say, ‘All right, cut 4% of your workforce.’ He said, ‘Cut 50%, 60%, 70%.’ That's a big thing."

Trump has ordered cabinet secretaries to cooperate with DOGE on staffing, giving instructions to the agency leads to use a "scalpel" when deciding which workers will remain in their jobs.