“The great Elon Musk” will lead a ministry, but in a lie. Trump gave him the “Department of Government Effectiveness”, which has the same title as that given to a department in the United States, but which is not a real department because Musk would then have to submit to a thorough investigation by the FBI and withdraw. his business, which he will not do. The new department, Trump said, will have the mission of “providing advice and guidance from outside the government.” No real power, but as much influence as Trump wants to give him.
Musk is enthusiastic about his mission to “dismantle bureaucracy, end excessive regulations and waste” and has promised $2 trillion in cuts. The millionaire should know something about these issues, since a good part of his business lives on public money, but just in case, his fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy is accompanying him in the new ministry. The “Indian Trump”, who “confronted” the president during the Republican primaries and proposed firing three out of four civil servants.
It’s difficult to know whether Trump gave these two millionaires a chainsaw or a simple nail clipper, since the new department will only make recommendations. Nor can the president-elect’s austerity promises be trusted, as he already made them in his first term and ended up bringing the deficit to historic limits. What is clear is that a public relations operation is underway, starting with the acronym of the new department in English: DOGE, the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency.
Can Trump and Musk remain friends?
The relationship between Trump and Musk is now in the middle of a honeymoon: Elon has put his fortune and his -electoral with the Ukrainian president. . Gone are the days when the former president called Musk a “lying artist” and the world’s richest man urged him to leave politics. But in the Trump story, there is no eternal love.
The president-elect doesn’t like anyone or anything to challenge his prominence and the inevitable comments about whether Trump is “the puppet” of another man who is also richer than him. This could be the direct path to explosive public distancing, which wouldn’t be the first time. Or maybe not. Maybe Elon Musk will know how to play the Trump game better than previous players because he is played more than anyone else.
Elon’s ego probably doesn’t need to run DOGE, but he certainly appreciates the joke of its acronym for what it’s worth. Maybe he also doesn’t care whether his fake ministry’s recommendations are heeded or not, but there are surely other things Musk needs from Trump. Tariffs on Chinese electric cars that compete with Tesla and larger public contracts for SpaceX and Starlink, without going any further. And also that the new president intimidates the European Commission so that it does not apply the laws on hate speech and disinformation to X, as the one who is going to be his vice-president has already clearly indicated.
With two characters so unpredictable and so thrilled to have met, you never know, but in this moment their interests align pretty well. And they go well beyond conservative mantras about government efficiency and the anger of Trump’s enemies at seeing the world’s richest man ever closer to power.
