President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Elon Musk — the world’s richest man, a megadonor to the Republican’s campaign, and a beneficiary of government contracts — will co-lead a not-yet-created department tasked with gutting federal regulations and slashing spending.

Musk, who leads several companies that are under federal scrutiny, will head the so-called Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire.

“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 declared in a statement, without explaining the funding structure of the commission or how it would achieve those sweeping objectives. Congress, which is likely to be under full Republican control come January, has authority over federal spending.

Trump said the commission “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large-scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.”

During the presidential race — into which Musk pumped more than $100 million to boost Trump — the Tesla CEO claimed a government efficiency commission would seek out $2 trillion in spending to eliminate. That sum, as The Washington Post observed, far exceeds the combined budgets of the Pentagon and the Departments of Education and Homeland Security.

Musk acknowledged during a virtual town hall event in late October that the massive cuts he hopes to enact would bring “temporary hardship” to ordinary Americans.

He has also cast his push to gut federal regulations as an “existential” issue, claiming that “humanity........

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