Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy suggested he could pick Elon Musk as a potential adviser in the White House if he won the 2024 election.
“I’ve enjoyed getting to know better Elon Musk recently, I expect him to be an interesting adviser of mine,” he said during an Iowa campaign event Friday, according to NBC News.
The biotech entrepreneur has previously praised Musk’s takeover of X — formerly known as Twitter — which involved laying off a substantial number of employees, as emblematic of his approach to slimming the federal bureaucracy.
“What he did at Twitter is a good example of what I want to do to the administrative state,” he told Laura Ingraham on Fox News on Aug. 18. “Take out 75 percent of the dead weight cost. Improve the actual experience of what it's supposed to do.”
Ramaswamy made some waves at the first GOP presidential debate Wednesday, raking in $450,000 in the first hours after the event. He has since returned to Iowa to continue his campaign pitch. The Messenger first reported his broader comments Friday.
Musk, who has suggested he will support Ron DeSantis and collaborated with the Florida governor on his campaign launch, is the richest man in the world and already holds a wide-ranging array of political power with his ownership of X, Tesla and SpaceX. Although he has not made a formal endorsement, he has previously expressed some praise for Ramaswamy.
“He is a very promising candidate,” Musk wrote on X about Ramaswamy on Aug. 17.
Ramaswamy’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Musk’s Tesla press team also did not return a request for comment.
