DOGE Bros: Trump and Musk Tell Hannity the ‘Bromance’ Endures

Trump now enjoys some of his highest approval ratings while the public increasingly looks at Musk with a mixture of curiosity and occasional trepidation, as his Department of Government Efficiency furiously hacks at some of the lesser-known parts of the federal bureaucracy with the equivalent of a meat cleaver. The president communicated that his deputy does all of this with his blessing.

Time Magazine had put the eccentric billionaire behind the Resolute Desk on the cover of their latest issue. The New York Times later wondered if this would drive a wedge between the two men. Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts began referring to him in committee as “Co-President Musk.” And yet Trump shrugged. The president, the real one, told Hannity that it was Musk who first called him to report that critics “are trying to drive us apart.”

The “bromance” between the multi-billionaire and the billionaire president persists. “The people are smart, they get it,” Trump said of their shared endeavor. Added Musk, who was careful to follow and never interrupt, “They do actually.”

The second Trump administration is more focused than the first. The reality TV-worthy drama of his first four years now seems a distant memory. This is a product of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ management. She has staffed the West Wing with MAGA faithful who are competent, loyal to the president, and dedicated to putting his vision into practice. Chaos comes not from palace rivalries like last time, but from the upheaval of the federal apple cart – the aforementioned tech support.

“One of the biggest functions of the DOGE team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out,” Musk explained. Decrees do not work, he argued. His work suggests he believes that amputations do.

When Trump ordered an end to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in the federal government, Musk and his team took to cutting it out root-and-branch. At the Department of Education, DOGE eliminated $370 million in DEI funding and terminated over 70 DEI training grants. Across the myriad of government agencies, they canceled nearly 100 DEI contracts. Elsewhere the Muskateers deputized by Trump shuttered relatively new agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and older ones, like USAID.

What he is doing here, Musk told Hannity, was nothing short of trying to save representative government: “The president is the elected representative of the people, so it’s representing the will of the people. And if the bureaucracy is fighting the will of the people, and preventing the president from implementing what the people want, then what we live in is a bureaucracy and not a democracy.”

Trump finds the work of his right-hand man pleasing, telling Hannity that when all the cost-cutting is said and done, he expects Musk will likely “get a trillion dollars out of the deficit.”

There has been some confusion over the exact role the business magnate holds in the administration. For instance, in court documents the White House acknowledged that Musk is not an employee of DOGE or its leader, at least technically speaking. Instead, the Office of Administration acknowledged in a declaration filed in response to a lawsuit brought by 14 Democratic state attorney generals that Musk is simply a special government employee who serves as a “senior advisor to the president.”

Wherever Musk fits exactly on the organizational spreadsheet, it was clear at the end of the Fox News interview that he has the blessing of the president despite any controversies.

While Washington bristles from the cuts, the philosophy of the Silicon Valley titan is not new. It is how he built his empire. Musk laid off nearly 80% of the Twitter workforce after acquiring the social media website that he would later rename X, and he once told biographer Walter Isaacson that his “algorithm” includes such a maniacal obsession with efficiency that “if you’re not adding back at least 10% of the things you cut, you haven’t cut enough.”

Applied to government, this seems to include the workforce responsible for the caretaking of the national nuclear arsenal. The Associated Press reported that as many as 350 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration were summarily fired by DOGE, only to be subsequently offered their jobs back in a hurry. Hannity did not broach this topic, but the sympathetic host did press Trump and Musk on the possibility of conflicts of interest.

Musk and his small army are currently marching through the Defense Department even as the Pentagon contracts with his outside businesses, such as SpaceX and StarLink, for services. The entrepreneur insisted that he hadn’t asked the president “for anything ever.” Insisted the president, “If there’s a conflict, he won’t be involved. He won’t want it.”

The interview lasted an hour in prime time. The answer to the larger question of what Musk does for Trump was answered, in so many words, with “whatever the president wants.”