Vivek Ramaswamy was pushed out of the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency because his vision didn’t align with the sieg heil-ing shadow president Elon Musk, according to an exclusive report from The Washington Post.
Ramaswamy was behind November’s Wall Street Journal op-ed that outlined a plan to slash trillions of dollars’ worth of essential government services and contract out the functions of the administrative state. He wanted DOGE to function more like a think tank, determining which government agencies could be shut down and which regulations could be repealed without congressional approval.
While Ramaswamy focused on that, Musk was meant to focus on spending and technology. But, the technocrat billionaire—glued to the president’s side—was reportedly on an entirely different page about how to best eviscerate the administrative state, according to several people who spoke with the Post. And his vision seems to have won out.
Monday’s executive order officially establishing the Department of Government Efficiency was merely a rebranding of the U.S. Digital Service, an Obama-era group created to respond to manage issues with the Affordable Care Act’s website, and that now determines best practices for the government use of technology.
While it seems like a pivot from creating a brand-new agency, this change is far more aligned with Musk’s technology-forward vision for the organization. It also lands him a White House office, and all the unfettered access that entails.
The executive order gave Musk “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” a privilege that will likely benefit the billionaire technocrat who has already made tens of billions of dollars from government contracts.
Musk also imagined DOGE being structured as a small team within the government, not the nongovernmental body structure Ramaswamy imagined. Because it’s a White House office, Musk will also be able to sidestep federal hiring rules—and Trump’s hiring freeze.
None of the work from Ramaswamy’s team garnered mention in an executive order Monday, according to the Post.
Earlier reports said that Ramawamy exited the cost-cutting department over clashes with rank-and-file members. Someone close to Trump said that Ramaswamy had “worn out his welcome.”
And it seems that held true up the ranks. “They’ve been wanting Vivek to step aside so Elon could have more control,” one person briefed on the matter told the Post. “There was tension, and then they had an out and kind of took the out.”
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