Jeffrey Toobin Predicts Trump’s New ‘Department’ Run by Musk and Ramaswamy Is ‘Gonna Drive Them Crazy’
President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of what he called the “Department of Government Efficiency” on Tuesday, and said it will be run by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
It appears the “department” will not be a congressionally-approved government agency, but rather an advisory commission working in or with the White House.
“I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’),” Trump said in a statement. “Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the ‘Save America’ Movement.”
The acronym “DOGE” is an apparent nod to Dogecoin, a nearly worthless cryptocurrency Musk has promoted.
Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars to back Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Ramaswamy ran for the Republican presidential nomination this year, but avoided criticizing the former president on the campaign trail.
While conservatives hailed the creation of the “department,” former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin warned the enterprise will likely fall short of their expectations.
On Tuesday’s AC360 on CNN, Toobin noted that Trump is obviously entitled to hire the advisers he wants, but added a caveat.
“However, there is a very boring and very important law called the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs how the government moves along in terms of changing how it works,” he explained. “And it requires a lot of hoops to be jumped through. If you wanna get rid of part of a government department. If you want to change the structure of the Department of Education, the Department of the Interior, you have to go through all these steps.”
Toobin then predicted that Musk and Ramaswamy will become frustrated with the endeavor.
“And like it or not, these two entrepreneurs are gonna have to start learning that and following it,” he continued. “And it’s gonna drive them crazy, and we’ll see how much they actually do. There have been lots of attempts to make the government more efficient. Al Gore did it. There was something called the Grace Report back in the Reagan administration. It’s a lot harder than it seems.”
Watch above via CNN.
