Donald Trump says he will hire Elon Musk as his Secretary For Cost-Cutting if he is elected US President for a second time and that Elon Musk wants the job.
Asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo if former president Trump would trim “fat in government,” he said he would let Musk take care of that.
“What agencies would you want to shut down?” Bartiromo asked.
“Let me have you ask another person that,” Trump said. “Because I’m going to have Elon Musk — he is dying to do this.
“ You know, he’s a great business guy, actually. You think of him for science and rockets. And every time I think he’s telling me about a new screw that was developed, he’s developed a new screw — screws are difficult — and it’s made out of titanium, and it’s so exciting.
“But you know what? He’s a great business guy, and he’s a great cost-cutter. You’ve seen that. And he said ‘I could cut costs without affecting anybody.’”
Bartiromo then asked if Musk would be in Trump’s cabinet.
“Not in the cabinet,” Trump said. “He doesn’t want to be in the cabinet. He just wants to be in charge of cost-cutting.
“We’ll have a new position: secretary of cost-cutting, OK? Elon wants to do that, and we have incredible people.
“He’s running a big business. You know, he can’t just say, ‘Oh, I think I’ll go into the cabinet.’ You know, other people can. He can’t.
“But Elon’s a little bit different in that sense.”
“Besides that,” Trump added, “I want him to send the rocket up to Mars. He’s made me a promise he’ll get to Mars before the end of my administration.
“Which will be long before, hopefully, China or Russia.”
Trump has floated the idea of Musk holding a top administration role before. In August, he called the SpaceX and Tesla CEO “a very smart guy”.
“I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would,” Trump told Reuters when asked if he would consider Musk playing a role in his administration as an advisor or cabinet member.
Trump and Bartiromo also discussed Musk’s endorsement and appearance at a rally last weekend.
Taking the stage, the richest man in the world — clad in a black Make America Great Again hat — jumped for joy.
“We have the endorsement of Elon, as you know,” Trump said. “He’s a great guy. He had such a good time. He put the black hat on…
“He calls it Dark MAGA. How cool is that? He’s a great guy. He’s given us a really powerful endorsement.
“He’s out campaigning in Pennsylvania today. He’s actually campaigning because he says if we don’t win, we’re not going to have a country.”
Even though, according to Trump, Musk says he can cut costs “without affecting anybody,” that seems highly unlikely. Especially when you consider his track record.
One place Musk has tried to cut significant costs is X, formerly Twitter, which he purchased in 2022.
He paid $44 billion after trying to get out of the deal. It is now worth $9 billion.
Since Musk’s takeover, he claims to have laid off 80 percent of the company’s staff.
The platform has been plagued by hate speech and disinformation including from Trump himself.
Upon purchasing Twitter, which he renamed X, Musk sacked the staff in order to cut costs which many believe had led to the platform being largely unmoderated.
He has also made a number of posts about race and said it was incredible that nobody had tried to kill Kamala Harris after an assassination attempt on Trump failed.
He has also been accused of supporting an extreme right-wing agenda with celebrities leaving the platform in protest.
Scotland’s ex-first minister Humza Yousaf has issued a warning to the tech billionaire after he called the ex-first minister a “super, super racist”.
X owner Musk used his own social media site to brand the Glasgow-born politician a bigot for a speech Yousaf made in the Scottish Parliament about racial injustice and lack of diversity.
The Tesla boss, who is facing accusations of stoking far right violence on Britain’s streets by suggesting civil war was “inevitable”, told his 193million followers the SNP MSP “loathes white people”.
“I’m going to have Elon Musk — he is dying to do this… We’ll have a new position: secretary of cost-cutting, OK? Elon wants to do that,”Trump said
Many people have sued eccentric billionaire Musk and his companies for alleged sexual harassment, racial discrimination, age discrimination, insider trading, cyberbullying, unpaid severance and “self-driving” car accidents.
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