Former President Trump said Tesla CEO Elon Musk would be too busy to serve in his Cabinet if he won the November election, but suggested the billionaire tech mogul could serve in a “consultative role.”
“He wants to be involved, I don’t think he can be involved because he runs a big company and stuff like that. [free] “For my Cabinet,” Trump said in an interview on “The Shawn Ryan Show.”
“Of course I’ll put him in the cabinet, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to do that with all the issues he has right now,” he continued. “But he can, so to speak, ‘consult with the people and come up with some very good ideas.'”
Trump pointed to Musk’s knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI), as he owns an AI startup called xAI, which he is trying to bring to Tesla.
The former president had previously signaled he would consider the Tesla CEO for a Cabinet position.
Musk, who also owns X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, supported Trump in the presidential election and backed a super PAC backing the former president’s candidacy.
“He’s a very smart guy. If he’d do it, I’d certainly do it. He’s a great guy,” Trump told Reuters in an interview last week, when asked about the possibility of appointing Musk to a Cabinet position or similar role.
During a two-hour conversation between Trump and Musk at X earlier this month, Musk also expressed his intention to join a government committee investigating the national debt and congressional spending.
“I think it would be great to have a government efficiency commission that would look at these things to make sure taxpayer money is being spent appropriately,” he told the former president. “I’d be happy to work with such a commission.”
Trump is currently trailing Vice President Harris by 3.7 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race, according to a Hill Decision Desk polling average. Harris became the Democratic nominee after President Biden dropped out of the race last month.
