Ramaswamy: 'We want to go in and slash and burn that bureaucracy'

Vivek Ramaswamy, who landed a role alongside tech billionaire Elon Musk in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration as heads of the new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), discussed plans for the agency Wednesday.

“We want to go in and slash and burn that bureaucracy to help Americans, stimulate the economy and to restore self-governance again,” Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“The people we elect to run the government — they're not even the ones who run the government anymore. It's these unelected bureaucrats,” he added.

On Tuesday, Trump announced Musk and Ramaswamy as the heads of DOGE, which aims to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures,” as well as restructure federal agencies.

DOGE would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government,” and work alongside the White House Office of Management and Budget, the president-elect said.

“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump added. "Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time."

Ramaswamy said Wednesday he believes “the root cause of our failure as a country" is the "unelected" bureaucrats in government.

“And I think they look at elected officials as these cute little puppets that come and go every little while,” he continued. “Not anymore. There's a new sheriff in town. Donald Trump's the president.”

In a statement, Musk said the department will “send shockwaves through the system and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!”

Trump and Musk became close during the former president's bid for the White House this year, with the tech billionaire endorsing Trump following an assassination attempt against him in July.

“The people of America gave @realDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” Musk posted on his social platform X early in the morning following Election Day.