Tesla CEO Elon Musk pitched a “government efficiency commission” to cut government waste while speaking with former President Donald Trump on Monday, and offered to “help out” with such an endeavor.
Musk called for the commission during his more than two-hour conversation with Trump on Monday night. Trump was very receptive to the idea. The relevant conversation begins around the 1:44:00 mark:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
“I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money, the taxpayers’ hard-earned money, is spent in a good way,” Musk told Trump. “And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission if it were formed.”
“I’d love it. You, you’re the greatest cutter,” Trump responded. “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay; you’re all gone.’”
He added that Musk “would be very good” in such a role and that he “would love it.”
Moments earlier in the discussion Musk emphasized the United States needs to reduce spending, noting that “inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it’s written by the government.”
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“We’re currently adding, I think, a trillion dollars to the deficit every roughly every 100 days,” he added. “And the interest payments on the national debt have now exceeded the defense budget. It’s on the order of a trillion dollars, and it keeps growing.”
Trump agreed with Musk that government spending must be reined in, saying moments later, “The waste is incredible, and nobody negotiates prices.”
As one example of how he successfully cut waste during his time in office, Trump pointed to a price reduction of more than one billion dollars that he negotiated from Boeing for Air Force I and another plane.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, on August 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
“But I said, I’m not going to pay $5.7 [billion]. I’m not going to do it. I said, ‘Who made the deal?’” Trump recounted, noting that he was informed former President Barack Obama’s team had made it.
“I said, ‘Well, then I know the deal is no good. I’m not going to do it.’ And over the course of about four weeks, by my saying ‘I’m not going to do it,’ I got the price reduced by $1.6 billion for the exact same plane, other than we had a nicer paint job,” he added.
Trump told Musk to take the example “and multiply that out times thousands of other items,” meaning taking such action on a much wider scale throughout the federal government.
“Exactly. Multiply it by a zillion,” Musk said.