Elon Musk has reportedly been camped out at Mar-a-Lago since Election Day. He’s been on many of Donald Trump’s calls with world leaders, and he’s been influencing Trump’s decisions on various appointments too. It was an open question as to whether Trump would actually appoint Musk to something within the administration, or whether Musk would simply act as Trump’s off-the-books consigliere. Well, we have our answer. Musk was just appointed to a newly-made position in “the Department of Government Efficiency.” Aka, DOGE. Remember how Musk has been obsessed with that years-old “doge” meme and has been promoting the Dogecoin cryptocurrency? Yeah.

Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency. It will be, he said, “the Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with major cuts and new efficiencies in bloated agencies in the federal bureaucracy by July 4, 2026.

“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”

The statement left unanswered all kinds of major questions about an initiative that is uncertain in seriousness but potentially vast in scope. For starters, the president-elect did not address the fact that no such department exists. And he did not elaborate on whether his two rich supporters would hire a staff for the new department, which he said is aimed in part at reducing the federal work force.

[From The NY Times]

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence… well, at that point, I doubt there will be a “United States of America” anymore, but sure. As for Musk… as many people are pointing out, this is just some ridiculous busywork position. It’s also very likely that Musk and Trump will both burn out on their asinine drama. I’m actually shocked that Trump isn’t already sick of Musk, honestly.

The fact that Musk has no idea he’s being given a fake busywork job makes me wonder how much management experience he actually has.

— Shadow Of The Nerdtree (@agraybee) November 13, 2024

for those unaware elon musk holds a ton of dogecoin (DOGE) and this is a president-elect using his executive power to create a new government department whose name is intended to boost the price of DOGE, thereby enriching the man running it (musk) https://t.co/cEw5NN5M2S

— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) November 13, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.