“We will make mistakes, we won’t be perfect,” Musk said of the Department of Government Efficiency’s assault on federal spending and waste. Since Trump took office, DOGE has laid off thousands of federal workers and gutted funding for a number of federal agencies and programs.

Edward Coristine, a former intern at Neuralink and now known by his infamous LinkedIn profile handle “bigballs,” is one of the core members of the DOGE team and the youngest-known Musk aide at age 19, TechCrunch has confirmed.

When he is not sharing memes of himself as a conquering Roman centurion or shrieking while brandishing a chain saw onstage at a CPAC conference, Elon Musk occasionally adopts the pose of a reasonable moderate offering an open hand of compromise that Democrats slap away.