The true impact Elon Musk could have if hes appointed to serve by Trump

Donald Trump has announced that, if elected, he will ask tech billionaire Elon Musk to lead a “government efficiency commission” that will conduct “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reforms.” The idea for such a commission was apparently suggested by Musk himself — and even before Election Day, he is eager to get started. “Can’t wait,” he posted on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he happens to own.Musk believes there’s “a lot of needless waste and regulation in government that needs to go.” The Trump-Musk alliance defies everything we know about human psychology.

Both are outsized, volatile personalities, both require cosmic levels of personal attention, but the two go about their business in radically different ways. Trump is essentially a showman.The size of his crowds is the measure of his self-worth.

Musk, who claims to have Asperger’s, communicates mostly online. Each is a superstar in his own domain.How long can it be before a fight breaks out and they start shoving each other out of the limelight? On the other hand, the two men are rule-breakers, deeply loathed by the rule-makers of the progressive establishment.

Maybe they can find common ground in that oppositional space. Does this matter much in the grand scheme of things? Trump has joked that he would like to see Musk become his “Secretary of Cost-Cutting.” If slashing budgets is the putative commission’s sole objective, none of its recommendations will be remembered five seconds after they are delivered.That’s just the way Washington works. But if it attempts a fundamental reconfiguration of the federal government — an aligning of industrial-age hierarchies with the realities of digital life — the commission’s work could be transformative. Only 23% of Americans trust the federal government. Let that number sink in. If reconfiguration can ...