DOGE could be a mechanism for a Musk shadow presidency, a nonsense job designed to keep Musk busy without giving him real power, or a curious mix of the two. In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting “thousands” of federal regulations and determining the “minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions.

Musk—the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of X (formerly Twitter)—was quoted in Trump's announcement as saying that DOGE "will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!"

Trump's former chief of staff reportedly told clients on a call that Musk likely won't even stick around long enough to see his goals through.