--- title: What Trump Said About Musk in Person of the Year Interview description: Trump told TIME that he may veto spending bills that don't match Musk's recommendations for cuts. canonical: https://time.com/7201887/trump-person-of-the-year-elon-musk/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-12-12T16:06:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:13.974Z article:section: Politics og:title: What Trump Said About Musk in Person of the Year Interview og:description: "Elon puts the country long before his company,” Trump tells TIME. og:url: https://time.com/7201887/trump-person-of-the-year-elon-musk/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcb3a5eafae38af24/698b24a99d83e81dffba1a7b/GettyImages-2185934057.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Donald Trump Watches SpaceX Launch Its Sixth Test Flight Of Starship Spacecraft og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Trump Said About Musk in Person of the Year Interview twitter:description: "Elon puts the country long before his company,” Trump tells TIME. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcb3a5eafae38af24/698b24a99d83e81dffba1a7b/GettyImages-2185934057.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Trump Said About Elon Musk in his TIME Person of the Year Interview > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: 2024 TIME Person of the Year [Watch (HLS stream): 2024 TIME Person of the Year](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/P1zwpqel.m3u8) (6:09)  _Published 2024-12-06. Donald Trump is TIME's 2024 Person of the Year_  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Dec 12, 2024 4:06 PM UTC  Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump watch the launch of a SpaceX Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump watch the launch of a SpaceX Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas.Brandon Bell—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Dec 12, 2024 4:06 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ President-elect Donald Trump tells TIME in his [Person of the Year interview](https://time.com/7201565/person-of-the-year-2024-donald-trump-transcript/) that he may reject spending bills sent to him from Congress if they do not match the cuts prescribed by a cost-cutting plan being drafted by billionaire advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The potential threat may give the pair the juice they need to force lawmakers to take their recommendations seriously, avoiding the irrelevance that met so many of their predecessors. In an interview with TIME journalists published Thursday, the former and future President also discounted potential conflicts of interest for Musk, whose private businesses have received more than $15 billion in federal contracts going back a decade and stand to have billions more funneled their way in years to come. Musk, the world’s richest man and an omnipresent figure in Trump’s planning for a return to power, is to most objective observers far from a neutral player in the deep-pocketed [intersection](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/20/us/politics/elon-musk-federal-agencies-contracts.html) of government and private partners. But that appearance matters little to Trump, he tells TIME. “I think that Elon puts the country long before his company,” Trump says. “He considers this to be his most important project, and he wanted to do it. And, you know, I think, I think he's one of the very few people that would have the credibility to do it, but he puts the country before, and I've seen it, before he puts his company.” As the owner of SpaceX, Musk effectively controls when NASA launches its rockets. The Defense Department has paid SpaceX more than $3 billion to get its satellites into orbit. Last year alone, SpaceX and Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer, had deals with 17 federal agences—organizations that, as Trump has proposed, are at the mercy of an outside review panel known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Asked directly about the potential dueling priorities, Trump doubled-down on Musk, one of the most generous fiscal backers of his campaign and affiliates. “Look, we have a country that is bloated with rules, regulations and with, frankly, people that are unnecessary to do. We are going to need a lot of people in a lot of other jobs. We're looking to get people into private sector jobs where they can do better and be more productive,” Trump said. “We're going to see what happens. But this country is bloated.” But Congress, ultimately, controls the purse, a fact that has bedeviled Presidents of both parties. Asked if he would veto spending plans that didn’t match the Musk-Ramaswamy proposals, Trump said he would consider it. But he also added he could move unilaterally. “There are many things you can do without Congress,” Trump said. During his unsuccessful campaign, Ramaswamy made executive action one of his biggest [pitches](https://time.com/6316072/vivek-ramaswamy-donald-trump-maga-heir/) to voters and has a novel framework for getting that job done. From the outside, Musk, too, has advocated a leaner government and [offered](https://time.com/7010537/trump-musk-harris-time-cover/) to run the program for Trump during a campaign chat on X, which was known as Twitter when Musk bought it in 2022\. Trump, never one to be burdened by details, has been more than happy to look at the big-picture goals and leave the annoyances to underlings. For instance, Trump tells TIME he wants “a virtual closure” of the Department of Education. A few folks would remain to make sure subjects like English and math are being taught but otherwise would offload responsibilities to states. In this vision, Trump sees spending per student to be cut in half but outcomes would improve. (TIME’s Solcyré Burga has a breakdown of Trump’s full plan and its implications on civil rights, student loans, and standardized tests [here](https://time.com/7174651/what-trump-winning-means-for-education/).) “A lot of these states … are well-run states,” Trump says, pointing at Iowa and Indiana, two states that, according to the federal [dataset](https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/) commonly called The Nation’s Report Card, outpace the national average. In that data-driven approach to government, the Musk-Ramaswamy cost-cutting agenda has already drawn some begrudging [support](https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/musk-ramaswamy-doge-aoc-democrats-rcna183080) from Democrats. But that worry—especially in the hands of mercurial billionaires like that pair—remains that the cuts would be a vehicle for an ideological agenda. The pair [visited](https://www.npr.org/2024/12/04/nx-s1-5205354/musk-ramaswamy-doge-congress) Capitol Hill last week to start their sales job for a project that, to be clear, only has teeth if Trump gets behind it. For now, at least, the DOGE ambition has the President-elect’s attention. But the [political will](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/06/doges-musk-ramaswamy-try-to-sell-congress-on-huge-spending-cuts.html) to make big cuts often comes up well short of action. Just ask how well the [recommendations](https://time.com/archive/6596171/the-trouble-with-simpson-bowles/) from the Barack Obama-commissioned Simpson–Bowles framework turned out. If the DOGE is going to dodge that fate, they’re going to need a consistent champion in Trump. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. 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