Trump picks Elon Musk to head government efficiency department | Donald Trump

Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to cut government bureaucracy, dismantle excessive regulations, cut wasteful spending and restructure federal agencies.”

Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has promoted it tirelessly ever since, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu. Trump said the agency would conduct a “full financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and make recommendations for drastic reforms.”

Ramaswamy, on the other hand, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur who ran for office for the first time last year, the Republican Party nomination. Earlier this week, he told ABC that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump's Cabinet.

He also has no government experience, but is pushing for cost reductions in the corporate sector. After building a stake in struggling online media company Buzzfeed, he called on the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.

Musk set a goal of cutting government spending by $2 trillion in a call with reporters last month. In practice, experts say these cost cuts could lead to deregulation and policy changes that would directly impact Musk's corporate universe, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.