NEWTON, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he would like Elon Musk to be an adviser in his administration should he be elected.
The statement came in response to a town hall question from a voter on Friday, asking the 38-year-old entrepreneur where he would seek guidance if elected.
Ramaswamy said he wants to bring in people with “a blank fresh impression.” He added, “I’ve enjoyed getting to know better, Elon Musk recently, I expect him to be an interesting adviser of mine because he laid off 75% of the employees at Twitter.”
When asked by NBC News about his communication with Musk apart from his public Twitter Spaces appearance, the GOP candidate explained that it’s mostly just social media interactions.
Musk on Aug. 17 reposted an interview on his social media platform, X, between Ramaswamy and Tucker Carlson, calling Ramaswamy “a very promising candidate.”
Ramaswamy admires the mass layoffs Musk conducted after taking over Twitter last year. The candidate has been vocal about his desire to shut down the Department of Education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
During his trip to the Hawkeye State, Ramaswamy reiterated his desire for mass changes across the federal government, saying “mass layoffs are absolutely what I will bring to the D.C. bureaucracy.”
NBC News reached out to Musk for further comment on if he would serve as an adviser if Ramaswamy were to be elected, but no response has been received.
Last month, Ramaswamy participated in a virtual discussion with Musk where the CEO described himself as a moderate voter. The two discussed a variety of topics, but Musk admitted that he disagreed with Ramaswamy on climate change, “I disagree with the climate stuff.”
During the first GOP debate on Tuesday, Vivek Ramaswamy said, “The climate change agenda is a hoax,” and he tweeted his quote in response to President Joe Biden writing “climate change is real, by the way.” Musk replied to Ramaswamy’s post writing, “It is possibly overstated in the short term, but we should be concerned about it long term.”
Ramaswamy isn’t the only GOP presidential candidate that Musk has engaged with during this primary election cycle.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his bid for the White House in a Twitter Space in May, a stunt which crashed the platform due to high traffic.
