Musk, the impulsive Silicon Valley billionaire, provides the public face to the bureaucracy-slashing efforts and takes the heat for the budget-cratering, employee-firing and overall havoc-wreaking that has been unleashed on the federal government. Vought, the conservative budget wonk, brings the expertise, insider knowledge and ideology to a dramatic downsizing that both men see as necessary and transformational, four former Trump administration officials told POLITICO.
The men, who haven’t talked about their relationship publicly, have found a way not only to get along but collaborate as they complete one of the most aggressive makeovers of the federal government in modern history. Neither would be as potent in their efforts to slash and upend the government without the other, said the former officials, some of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic between the pair.
The line between where the work of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency stops and the work of Vought’s Office of Management and Budget begins is blurry — even to people close to the efforts. But in practice, it’s been working something like this: Musk’s army makes very public incursions into agencies and ferrets through data using artificial intelligence and other technology to identify allegedly wasteful spending while Musk handles the public relations campaign on X and amplifies their findings. Vought’s OMB, meanwhile, brings the technical tools and expertise to figure out, one, whether the concerns DOGE raises are actually problems and, two, what to do with them.
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