Elon Musk has been appointed to lead Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency alongside fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in what has been dubbed “the Manhattan Project of our time”. The Telegraph has more.
The billionaire Tesla boss will co-run DOGE – which coincides with the name of his cryptocurrency Dogecoin – alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump ally and fellow entrepreneur.
Mr. Musk said his appointment to the role “will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people”.
Mr. Trump hailed the new department as “potentially the Manhattan Project of our time” and insisted DOGE would “drive large scale structural reform”, and create an “entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before”.
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my administration to dismantle Government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies — essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement,” Mr. Trump added.
The SpaceX boss had been widely tipped to play a key role in the President-elect’s administration.
He was one of Mr. Trump’s highest profile supporters on the election trail and is said to have spent millions helping to fund his winning campaign.
Mr. Musk has recently undertaken high-profile corporate cost-cutting. After buying X in 2022, he cut staff by 80%, which he claims saved the company about $3 billion.
However, since he took over the social media platform – formerly known as Twitter – revenue has declined and many advertisers have fled.
On Tuesday Mr. Musk promised Americans that DOGE will keep a “leaderboard” for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars”.
His co-lead at DOGE, Mr. Ramaswamy, is a former candidate in the Republican primaries who has also been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump and a regular at campaign rallies.
He is the founder of a pharmaceutical company with a personal wealth estimated at just under $1 billion (£780 million).
The President-elect said the work of the new department would conclude by July 4th 2026, and a smaller and more efficient Government would be its “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Guardian has quit X in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory. The Left-wing newspaper explains:
We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.
This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-Right conspiracy theories and racism. The U.S. Presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.
Pathetic.
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