Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will soon lead a new non-governmental agency that President-elect Donald Trump has tasked with stripping billions of dollars from the U.S. government. And these U.S. oligarchs will be explaining their efforts in a new podcast, according to a video posted by Ramaswamy late Wednesday.
Musk and Ramaswamy were named to what they’re calling the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new commission of sorts that will be attempting to fire thousands of workers and abolish entire federal agencies. But the two men don’t have any official authority to do those things. At least not yet, according to longstanding norms.
“Elon and I, we’re not politicians. We’re businessmen. We’re not going in as government bureaucrats or even employees. We’re outside volunteers,” Ramaswamy said in a video posted Wednesday to YouTube.
Why would Ramaswamy and Musk work as volunteers? Apparently, it’s because they just love the country so much and has nothing to do with their self-interest. It’s surely just a coincidence that Musk has made his fortune on the backs of government subsidies and contracts. As the New York Times reported last month, in 2023 alone, Musk’s companies were promised roughly $3 billion spread out across 100 different contracts from 17 federal agencies. Ramaswamy made his fortune in pharmaceuticals.
These guys have a lot at stake. And that’s why they’re going to launch a podcast to tell everyone about what they’re up to. It’s all about “transparency,” as Ramaswamy describes it, and surely isn’t a propaganda push to normalize the wanton destruction they’re about to unleash.
“Elon and I are going to start a separate track of DOGEcasts that explain exactly what we’re doing to the public to provide transparency,” Ramaswamy said in his new video. “And what is a once-in-a-generation project? We want to bring the public along with us to lift the curtain, to take us behind the scenes of what actually that waste, fraud, and abuse in government looks like.”
Ramaswamy didn’t say when the DOGEcast would start, insisting they’re, “neck deep right now in transitioning to the new dawn on January 20.” That new dawn will be more like a sunset for American democracy from the perspective of half the country. Trump has promised mass deportations and a full-fledged attack on his political rivals, including the use of the military domestically. The Trump team is even planning to go after U.S. generals involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan under the pretense that they were doing something treasonous, according to CNN. Gen. Mark Milley, who Trump has previously said should be executed for treason, is likely high on that list of targets.
Musk and Ramaswamy will face obstacles with DOGE, even if they have a fascist leader like Trump on their side. Both the details of their plan and the legality of their “department” are hotly debated, but these extremely wealthy men are deadly serious when they say they want to cut government spending at catastrophic levels. The U.S. oligarchs wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday trying to justify their goals. And they believe anything they might attempt that’s now widely considered illegal would be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
From the Journal:
Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.
The op-ed also claims that they’re going to use advanced technology to make cuts, though it’s not clear what that means. There’s a good chance they’d deploy artificial intelligence tools like Musk’s Grok, but we simply don’t know yet.
“We don’t want DOGE to exist forever,” Ramaswamy said in his new video. “To the contrary, we want this to end, and the need for it to end, by July 4th, 2026, which is appropriate. That’s the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. And I can think of no better gift to this country than a downsized government that would make our founding fathers proud. And that’s what we hope to help play a role in delivering for them.”
We’ll have to wait and see how successful these oligarchs might be at slashing and burning elements of the government they don’t find useful to themselves. Some people are hopeful that Trump may tire of Musk, who’s getting a lot of attention for his ambitious plans to remake the government in his image. Trump, of course, hates when other people get more attention than him. And Musk’s latest Time magazine cover will surely irk Trump.
How Elon Musk became a kingmaker https://t.co/1JPlCQq1HE pic.twitter.com/83OhT0OgXE
— TIME (@TIME) November 21, 2024
But Musk and Trump both have a lot to gain by working together to dismantle the U.S. government. And nobody can really predict what will come next. Matt Gaetz just withdrew his nomination for Attorney General on Thursday, which was quite a surprise. So all bets are off for the foreseeable future. If you think you know for certain how this all shakes out, you’re probably kidding yourself.
