US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, would lead a new US government efficiency group tasked with cutting federal waste, as the Republican added a series of seasoned figures and hardliners to his incoming administration.
Musk became a key ally to Trump during his campaign, reportedly spending more than US$100 million to help the Republican win and repeatedly boosting Trump’s candidacy on X, the platform he owns.
Trump said Musk and another stalwart ally, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, would lead a “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) a tongue-in-cheek reference to an Internet meme and cryptocurrency.
Photo: AFP
“Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” Trump said in a statement.
The department “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government,” a move that could allow Musk to avoid disclosing his financial holdings, he said.
In a post on X, Musk said the department’s actions would be published online “for maximum transparency” and would include a “leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”
Photo: AFP
“This will be both extremely tragic and extremely entertaining,” Musk wrote.
Trump, 78, was set to make a triumphant return to Washington yesterday to meet US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
With just more than two months until he takes office, Trump is moving quickly to consolidate an extraordinary comeback.
Photo: AP
Governments worldwide are scrutinizing Trump’s picks for signs of how closely the incoming administration would stick to his promises of an isolationist foreign policy, harsh crackdowns on illegal immigration and persecution of people he perceives as enemies.
Late on Tuesday, Trump named military veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his incoming defense secretary.
“With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Trump named US Congressman Mike Waltz, a former special forces officer, as his incoming national security adviser.
Waltz has hawkish views on China, but is not considered isolationist, despite desire in some Trump circles for the US to retreat from foreign engagements and cut obligations to allies like NATO.
Trump also announced he was choosing his former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA.
Another fervent pro-Israel figure, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, was named as ambassador to Israel.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of
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