Trump’s Musk and Ramaswamy appointments spark conflict of interest fears – US politics live

Pair, put in charge of new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’, both lead firms with lucrative government contracts

In an analysis piece for CNN, Stephen Collinson has described Donald Trump’s flurry of announcements as “a night of Maga shock and awe.”

He writes:

The selection of people such as Elon Musk, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth are partly designed to honor the aspirations of Trump’s voters and epitomize the president-elect’s own outsider brand — as well as his deeply developed craving for loyalty.

His choice of ultra-loyalists is borne out of Trump’s frustration that establishment military officers, officials and conventional Washington operators reined in his own most extreme impulses in his first term.

A person familiar with the effort, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive negotiations, said that details of the organization’s funding would emerge soon. The [Republicans] had talked about reducing waste for many years, but had not been effective, the person added, leading the campaign to the conclusion ‘outsiders with a much more entrepreneurial approach’ were better suited to the task.

Some Trump advisers see Musk’s commission as an opportunity to implement long-sought goals to reduce federal spending and regulation. They have pointed to the Grace Commission, a Reagan-era panel that recommended billions of dollars in spending cuts. Under that model, which some Trump advisers hope the Musk plan will emulate, the commission identified hundreds or thousands of examples of wasteful government programs and regulations, and called on Congress to approve the recommendations, backed by the president.