NEW YORK — Former president Donald Trump on Thursday endorsed a government commission that could give Elon Musk broad responsibilities for auditing federal spending and regulations, tightening their pre-election alliance during a wide-ranging speech in which he also made some misleading or baseless claims on economic policy.
Trump’s advisers have discussed the commission for months, and Musk has publicly expressed interest in it on X, the social media platform he owns. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, formally expressed his support during a speech here.
“This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said, adding that the new commission would save “trillions of dollars.” Budget experts have said it is possible a commission could identify tens of billions or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending cuts but that it is not credible to imagine the commission cutting trillions of dollars without severely affecting federal services.
Trump said Musk has “agreed to head the task force” and credited him for the recommendation of the panel. Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The speech was a fresh indicator of the extent to which the two men have collaborated in the run-up to the November election. Musk, who is also a Tesla and Space X executive, endorsed the former president after he was slightly wounded in an attempted assassination in Butler, Pa., in July and has used his social media platform to try to help Trump in ways that have prompted concern from some critics.
Musk recently attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and posted a fake image depicting her as a communist, echoing Trump’s disparaging nickname for her: “Comrade Kamala.” He falsely claimed in a message accompanying the fabricated image, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”
The image appeared to violate X’s own policies on manipulated content, which state that any “media that is significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated, or fabricated” must either be labeled or removed. Days after sharing the image, however, Musk’s original post was still circulating, with nearly 83 million views Thursday.
The close alliance between a major-party presidential nominee and the owner of an influential social media platform stands out, particularly this close to an election and with Musk embroiled in recent controversies.
Musk’s allies have poured millions into America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC that Musk helped create. ,The group had raised $8.7 million as of June 30, according to public filings. Donors include wealthy business executives, such as former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias; Palantir co-founder and Austin-based tech investor Joe Lonsdale; and Sequoia Capital investor Shaun Maguire.
The growing role of Musk in Trump’s orbit reflects his broader move to the right, a tack that has sometimes involved promoting fringe conspiracy theories. This past week, Musk posted and then deleted a post referencing an interview that Tucker Carlson did with podcaster Darryl Cooper. That interview received widespread backlash after Cooper promoted falsehoods about World War II and the Nazis.
Musk’s support of Trump marks a major departure from past years, when Musk told CNBC days before the 2016 election that he felt Trump was “not the right guy” because he “doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.” In 2020, he favored Biden.
Now, the growing ties between Musk and Trump are set to be cemented through a governing body that would probably put Musk at the center of U.S. policymaking, if Trump wins a second term. Despite potential conflicts of interest with his sprawling business empire, Musk would either chair or help lead an independent commission that would comb through thousands of federal programs and formally recommend which ones to cut, according to the plan long discussed by Trump and many of his top advisers. Cuts to government spending would probably need congressional approval, but cuts to government regulations could often be at least attempted by Trump unilaterally, should he win the 2024 election.
Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said Musk is a natural fit for an efficiency commission given the extreme cuts he has made at his companies over the past few years. Musk fired the bulk of the staff at Twitter, now called X, when he took over and conducted mass layoffs at Tesla this year. Musk’s brash and sometimes impulsive leadership style is similar to Trump’s, he said, which suggests the two would probably “get along” and have “a lot of fun working together.”
Others were more skeptical.
Darrell West, a senior fellow in the governance studies program at the Brookings Institution, said appointing Musk to such a role is a “terrible idea.” West highlighted Musk’s leadership at X, where the valuation has cratered since he bought the platform in October 2022, and is worth as little as around half of what he paid.
“The government certainly needs to become more efficient,” West said. “But you need someone who knows how to get more efficient in ways that are effective. Musk never demonstrated that at Twitter. He just cut, cut, cut, and compromised the mission of the company.”
Trump made several other promises during his speech at the Economic Club of New York. He vowed that he would issue a “national emergency declaration to achieve a massive increase in domestic energy supply,” even as U.S. oil production reached a record this year. He also announced that he would reduce the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent “solely for companies that make their product in America.” Trump previously promised to reduce the corporate tax rate for all firms to 15 percent.
Trump also promised to use new tariff revenue to start a sovereign wealth fund managed by the U.S. government, which would then invest in businesses and earn an annual return for taxpayers. Republicans have traditionally opposed this idea as representing too much government intervention in the private sector.
When asked about how he’d make child care more affordable, Trump suggested that he would help pay for it by placing taxes on foreign governments. “We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kinds of numbers we’re going to be taking in,” he said. He did not provide details or specifics about how this would work; experts have warned imposing tariffs on such a scale would risk triggering an international trade war.
While the venue differed from his typical campaign rallies, he touched on many of the same themes, including vilifying undocumented immigrants. Trump falsely claimed that “100 percent of the jobs created under this administration has gone to illegal migrants that came into our country.”
In a post on X on Thursday, Musk said he looks forward to “serving America if the opportunity arises.”
“No pay, no title, no recognition is needed,” he said in a message to his roughly 196 million followers, referencing the commission.
But Musk’s companies have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and other subsidies, and he has been critical of the regulatory push from federal agencies under President Joe Biden. Under Biden, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have advanced investigations into Tesla’s marketing of its driver-assistance technologies. Musk has also been critical of Biden’s electric vehicle subsidies, which he has said benefit his competitors more than Tesla.
Steve Moore, who also pitched the former president on the idea, said Musk would be “absolutely perfect” to run the commission. Among the other names that could be considered for the commission are Fred Smith, the former CEO of FedEx, and Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, said two people familiar with the idea who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions.
During a meandering conversation on X between Trump and Musk that went on for more than two hours last month and was initially marred by technical errors, both made no secret of what they stand to gain from their relationship. Musk called for a reduction in government rules and regulations, and told the former president that he would be “happy to help out” on a government commission if Trump is elected again.
Trump, meanwhile, said Musk’s endorsement meant more to him than most.
Trump asked Musk last year if he was interested in purchasing Truth Social. Musk reinstated Trump on X in 2022, after the former president was banned following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. While Trump has posted on the site occasionally, he still primarily uses Truth Social.
Stein reported from Washington and Thadani from San Francisco.
