Since President-elect Donald J. Trump last month named Elon Musk to help lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, the tech billionaire has turned to X to trumpet his plans.
Mr. Musk, who owns the platform, has singled out at least four federal employees focused on climate issues — including the niece of Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California — who he suggested ought to lose their jobs. “Maybe her advice is amazing,” Mr. Musk joked of Alexis Pelosi, a senior climate adviser at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Musk, X and Alexis Pelosi did not respond to requests for comment.
He has also criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has fined him millions of dollars. And on Sunday, he wrote, “The government is more broken than you could possibly imagine.”
The posts are part of Mr. Musk’s plans to reduce the federal budget by $2 trillion, or 30 percent. To do so, he has proposed a return-to-office mandate for government workers, suggesting that it would lead to mass resignations. He has suggested cutting entire agencies. And he has called for firing agency leaders like the Federal Trade Commission’s outgoing chair, Lina Khan, who led an investigation into privacy practices at X after Mr. Musk’s takeover.
Mr. Musk’s public flogging of government workers echoes the playbook he used during his contentious bid to buy X — then known as Twitter — in 2022. At the time, he publicly blasted company executives as being incompetent and floated suggestions for how he might run the business, including making major cost cuts.
Mr. Musk’s use of the platform to publicly air his plans became a powerful tool in buying the social media company, rallying supporters to his cause and drawing in investors. Now he is employing the same strategy with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, persuading supporters to work for the effort and winning over politicians to achieve his goals.
