Lawrence O’Donnell is walking back his earlier theory that Elon Musk could be the “real” president while Donald Trump golfs all day, after the billionaire owner of X was handed a “humiliating demotion” on Tuesday.
The incoming Republican president announced he is giving Musk “a job that does not exist and will last at most 18 months,” the MSNBC host said Tuesday on his show The Last Word.
Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department” of Government Efficiency providing “advice and guidance from outside the Government” to cut spending and restructure federal agencies, according to a statement from Trump. Their work will wrap on July 4, 2026.
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Not only does Musk have to share the position—and the press release—with Ramaswamy, he’s been given a job that doesn’t exist, O’Donnell said. Congress would need to create the department, give it a budget and approve Musk’s Cabinet appointment.
That would mean televised congressional hearings about the massive conflict of interest created by putting the world’s richest man, who has $15 billion in U.S. government contracts, in charge of examining the very same government spending his companies receive.
(Already the government contractor is excited to be getting his very own .gov email address, which is the type of conflict of interest that federal law would seem to prohibit.)
Instead, Musk’s job will probably mean an office in the Executive Building and the honor of sending his budget ideas next door to the White House Office of Management and Budget, O’Donnell predicted.
“It seems unlikely he will get an office in the West Wing of the White House, where the action really is, and be able to just walk down the hall to see the president whenever he wants to,” he added. “The White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, will no doubt use much of her bureaucratic infighting skill to keep Elon Musk as far away from real power as possible.”
For their part, Musk and Ramaswamy seem happy about their new jobs, which Musk says will have great merch. He’s also promised to create a leaderboard for “the most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars” and to blast anything he considers “wasteful” spending on his social media platform X.
That could explain why Trump decided to put two people in charge of government efficiency, which already doesn’t seem very efficient. If O’Donnell is right, the role is shaping up to be more like Propagandist in Chief—a position for which Musk has far more experience than anything related to the federal budget.
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