- Musk will lead the newly created department alongside pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Rawaswamy, who himself ran for the Republican Party nomination against Trump before withdrawing
United States president-elect Donald Trump says Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk and Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies,” Trump said in a statement on Tuesday.
Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Source: AAP, Getty
The appointments reward two Trump supporters from the private sector.
Musk leads the electric car company Tesla, social media platform X and rocket company SpaceX, while Ramaswamy is the founder of a pharmaceutical company and ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Trump and then threw his support behind the former president after dropping out.
Musk gave millions of dollars to support Trump’s presidential campaign and made public appearances with him.
Elon Musk gave millions of dollars to support Donald Trump’s campaign and made public appearances with him. Source: AAP, AP / Evan Vucci
Trump had said he would offer Musk, the world’s richest person, a role in his administration promoting government efficiency.
The acronym of the new department — DOGE — coincides with the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin that Musk promotes.
“This will send shockwaves through the system and anyone involved in government waste, which is a lot of people!” Musk said, according to Trump’s statement, which called the new government initiative “potentially ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” referring to the US plan to build the atomic bomb that helped end World War Two.
Trump has been shaping his team ahead of his return to the White House in January.
Other appointments Trump says he will make include hardline immigration official Tom Homan as the country’s “border czar” and his campaign manager Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff.
The president-elect has also said he will nominate former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to be the US ambassador to Israel and New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik as United Nations ambassador. Trump has named South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as head of the US Department of Homeland Security.
@SBS News
