President-Unelect Musk and his oligarch sidekick, Vivek Ramaswamy, are not waiting for anything like Donald Trump’s inauguration or actual authority before getting to work at slashing the federal government so they and their billionaire buddies can get bigger tax cuts. According to The Washington Post, Musk and Ramaswamy have been “sending representatives” from their non-existent DOGE "department" to "agencies across the federal government” for “preliminary interviews.” That includes the Treasury, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services departments and the Internal Revenue Service.
Let’s be clear: Neither Musk nor Ramaswamy have any legit reason to do this. Their so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not part of the federal government. It exists in their own greedy, power-hungry minds only because puppet-elect Donald Trump unofficially declared it so. But why should these two self-appointed masters of the universe care about anything like governmental rules that don't benefit them? The Post says they already have 50 staffers working out of Musk’s Washington SpaceX offices and aim to have 100 staffers by Puppet Trump’s inauguration.
More from The Washington Post:
For a project named as a joking reference to a meme-based cryptocurrency, DOGE has taken numerous steps since the election to build a very real Washington operation. Over the past several weeks, DOGE has been deluged by applications that have poured in through direct messages on X, Musk’s social media site, where the group put out a public call for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
That led to swarms of applicants who sought to bring their experience and credentials to the attention of Musk or Ramaswamy. In a blog post, Vinay Hiremath, co-founder of the tech company Loom, described four “intense and intoxicating” weeks of DOGE-related work after he became involved.
Although he ultimately decided not to relocate to Washington for a job with DOGE, Hiremath said he had been added to multiple groups on the encrypted messaging app Signal, where DOGE is conducting much of its initial work. Hiremath did not respond to requests for comment.
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Key leadership roles have also fallen into place. Steve Davis, the Boring Company president who oversaw steep cost-cutting at Twitter (now X) after Musk bought it, is helping to oversee the entire effort, and deputies have been recruited to focus on narrower aspects of its agenda, such as legislation and regulation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Emil Michael, a former Uber executive, is one of the people overseeing the effort to cut regulations, according to one person familiar with the matter, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect matters not yet made public. Trump has announced the appointment of Katie Miller, press secretary and communications director for former vice president Mike Pence, to DOGE. Trump also said in December that Bill McGinley, the former White House Cabinet secretary whom he’d previously named as White House counsel, would serve instead as DOGE counsel.
What could go wrong?
