Pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and tech billionaire Elon Musk have presented a united front as the co-chairs of President-elect Donald Trump’s new government cost-cutting commission. But the two men haven’t always been quite so friendly, according to CNN: For years, in fact, Ramaswamy panned Musk as a “circus monkey” who relied too much on government contracts and was “increasingly beholden” to China.
Some of Ramaswamy’s remarks, first reported on Wednesday by CNN, foreshadowed critiques that other observers have since levied against Musk: namely, that the Trump mega-donor and Tesla and SpaceX CEO stands to benefit personally from his perch in the second Trump administration. Last year alone, Musk’s companies did almost $3 billion of business with 17 federal agencies, The New York Times reported. “Both Tesla and SpaceX quite likely would not exist as successful businesses if it were not for the use of public funding, either through subsidies, through the electric car industry, or through actual government contracting in the case of SpaceX,” Ramaswamy told the host of a Fox News podcast in 2022.
Ramaswamy has also repeatedly lambasted Musk’s close ties to China, which manufactured more than half of Tesla’s vehicles in 2022 and 2023. In multiple media appearances and social media posts, the investor and pharmaceutical entrepreneur accused Musk of being “in China’s pocket,” of “bend[ing] the knee” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping and changing “his political tunes” to appease Beijing.
“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” Ramaswamy said on his podcast in May 2023.
Musk publicly addressed Ramaswamy’s criticisms once, in April of that year, after Ramaswamy accused him of “doubling down” on his relationship with the Chinese Communist Party on X. “Wrong on many levels. Tesla is increasing production rapidly in Texas, California & Nevada,” Musk fired back. Five months later, Ramaswamy posted another message claiming that climate change was a hoax. “It is possibly overstated in the short term, but we should be concerned about it long term,” Musk responded.
Whatever their differences on climate change or China policy, Musk and Ramaswamy have long agreed on the need to cut government waste—the subject of their current project at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The independent advisory panel will make recommendations to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, and has promised to ax as much as $2 trillion in government spending.
In a statement to CNN, Ramaswamy said that he made his past critiques of Musk before the two had met. Now, the DOGE co-chair added, “I love him and respect the hell out of him, and I’m proud to call him a friend.”
