US President Donald Trump has praised tech billionaire Elon Musk for his enthusiasm in implementing executive orders issued after returning to office on Tuesday, portraying him as his chief implementer.
In a joint interview aired on Fox News, the two men spent considerable time praising each other and dismissing concerns that Trump was overstepping his executive authority. Trump has signed dozens of executive orders in the past three weeks, many of which have been challenged in the courts as potentially unconstitutional.
Musk, a billionaire who was Trump’s top donor in his 2024 presidential campaign, was tasked with leading the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE) with the stated goal of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in federal spending.
“The DOJ team’s biggest job is to make sure the president’s executive orders are actually implemented,” Musk told Fox News. In the interview, Trump stressed that his policies – including wholesale attacks on federal institutions – must be implemented without delay, and said Musk was crucial in pushing them forward.
“You write an executive order and you think it’s done, you send it out, it’s not done. It’s not enforced,” Trump said. According to him, Musk and the DOJ team have now become an enforcement mechanism to implement his administration’s agenda without hindrance from anyone within the federal workforce – otherwise they risk losing their jobs. “And someone who probably didn’t want to do it, all of a sudden he’s signing it,” Trump said.
The will of the people
Just hours before the Fox interview aired, Trump signed a sweeping executive order that sought to expand and strengthen the White House’s direct control over federal regulators. The order, which could face legal challenges, would force agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to submit regulatory proposals to the White House for review.
“For the federal government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials exercising broad executive powers must be overseen and controlled by a popularly elected president,” the executive order states. Musk laughed at Trump’s role as an executive, described himself as a “technologist” and wore a T-shirt that read “Tech Support” for the interview.
Musk dismissed criticism that he was acting like the US president, saying that none of Trump’s cabinet members were elected and that he would see his role as facilitating Trump’s agenda. “The president is the elected representative of the people, so he represents the will of the people,” Musk explained, “and if the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then we are not living in a democracy, we are living in a bureaucracy.”
President Allen?
Musk’s prominent role in the Trump administration has raised public questions about who really controls the White House, though the Republican president quickly dismissed rumors of a strained relationship between the two. “Actually Alan called me,” Trump said, “and he said, ‘You know, they’re trying to separate us.’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’”
But Trump expressed confidence that Americans would not be fooled by the alleged efforts to damage the relationship between him and Musk. “I thought they were good at it,” Trump said, quoting the media. “They’re actually bad at it, because if they were good at it, I would never have been president. People are smart, they understand.”
