Fareed Zakaria Praises “Brilliant” Musk and Ramaswamy’s Role in New Department of Government Efficiency

CNN host Fareed Zakaria lauded Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on Sunday as “brilliant” leaders of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an initiative announced by President Donald Trump aimed at cutting federal spending and streamlining government operations.

Zakaria noted that the appointment of Musk and Ramaswamy to spearhead DOGE marks a potential turning point in the GOP’s long-standing promise to roll back expansive government programs established under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. While he stopped short of endorsing their plan outright, Zakaria praised their effort to tackle inefficiency and waste in federal programs.

“Of Donald Trump’s recent announcements, the one that intrigues, even excites me the most, is the establishment of DOGE,” Zakaria said during his broadcast. “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will be in charge of DOGE, are both brilliant, and the federal government has clearly become too expansive and its writ too cumbersome.”

Zakaria outlined the challenges facing the initiative, noting that core programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and military spending are politically untouchable. This leaves just 15% of the federal budget, encompassing areas such as veterans’ benefits, agricultural subsidies, and infrastructure spending, as potential targets for reform. He acknowledged Musk’s ambition for $2 trillion in cuts but stressed the difficulty of achieving such reductions without significant sacrifices.

The CNN host also highlighted the historical context of DOGE, reflecting on the Republican Party’s decades-long struggle to fulfill its promise of repealing New Deal policies. “Ever since the 1930s, the party’s strongest ideologues have promised to repeal the New Deal and dismantle the architecture of the federal government that was largely constructed by FDR. But they never did,” Zakaria said.

He pointed out that even Republican presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to Donald Trump, have largely maintained government spending levels, while Bill Clinton was the last president to balance the federal budget. Despite these obstacles, Zakaria expressed optimism about the potential for meaningful reform.

“The U.S. federal government is smaller than much of the industrialized world in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP. It still desperately needs reform and streamlining,” Zakaria said. “With DOGE, we may finally get an effort to actually deliver on the central Republican promise of the last 70 years. And we will find out what America thinks of it.”