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Former President Donald Trump said that Tesla TSLA-6.94% and SpaceX Elon Musk has agreed to lead a new government commission in his potential administration — as long as he has the time.
“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations with drastic reforms,” the Republican nominee for president said Thursday at the New York Economic Club.
“Elon, because he’s not very busy, has agreed to head that task force,” Trump added. “It’d be interesting, if he has the time, he’d be a good one to do it. But he’s agreed to do it.”
Such a commission was publicly pitched by Musk last month, when the world’s richest individual interviewed Trump on his social media platform, X. Musk has frequently taken aim at federal spending and the growing federal debt, which Trump widened by $8.4 trillion during his first term in office. His successor, President Joe Biden, added $4.3 trillion to the debt over the first three years and five months of his presidency.
Musk has supported naming the commission the Department of Government Efficiency, with its acronym — DOGE, being a reference to his favorite meme-based cryptocurrency. Earlier on Thursday, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump would adopt his proposal, Musk said he looks forward to serving “if the opportunity arises.”
“No pay, no title, no recognition is needed,” Musk wrote on X.
But such a job — regardless of any “recognition” or title Musk would receive — would come rife with conflicts of interest. Taking such a position could see Musk put his stock in a blind trust or divest, which would likely tank Tesla’s stock price.
Besides his electric vehicle company and aerospace company, Musk leads artificial intelligence startup xAI, brain chip startup Neuralink, and the tunneling firm The Boring Company. His nonprofit, the Foundation, is also accepting applications for a private school in Texas, and he also helped found a pro-Trump super political action committee over the summer.
His businesses are subject to regulation by federal agencies, which would complicate any role he could take scrutinizing them. SpaceX, for example, is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration; it also counts NASA and the Pentagon as some of its most important customers. Tesla is subsidized by both grants and federal tax credits. Both companies have come into conflict with the Environmental Protection Agency, which earlier this year found that SpaceX had violated federal rules.
In the past, Trump has floated having Musk consult as an unofficial advisor on AI or other issues. Bloomberg News in May reported that Musk has has counseled Trump on cryptocurrency policy and could be given a job advising Trump on the issue.
Musk in 2017 resigned from his spot on Trump’s White House advisory councils after the then-president withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, calling the move “not good for America or the world.” In an interview with Trump earlier this month, Musk said climate change wasn’t an issue that needed immediate attention and walked back his earlier, harsher comments on the oil and gas industry.