US elections: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants Elon Musk as adviser

Indian-American Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to make Tesla CEO Elon Musk his adviser if he is elected president in 2024. He made the remarks on Friday at a town hall in Iowa, United States.

Local media reports claimed that he praised Musk's decision-making skills, including the decision to lay off over 70 per cent of Twitter employees.

"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 per cent of the employees at Twitter," Ramaswamy was quoted as saying by NBC News. "And then the effectiveness actually went up," he added.

Ramaswamy was referring to Musk's decision to let go of hundreds of Twitter employees after he took over the company last year. Musk fired half of the company's 7,500 employees soon after taking over Twitter in November last year. The move was one of several steps taken by Musk in an attempt to cut costs.

Several former employees claimed that they were not even formally informed about it. Some of said that they were suddenly locked out of their work email without any advance notification. Due to the revenue issues, Musk even claimed that he bought the "world's largest non-profit."

This is not the first time that Ramaswamy has complimented Musk's management skills. He even claims that he would run the US the way Musk runs Twitter (now called X).

"What he did at Twitter is a good example of what I want to do to the administrative state," he said in an interview on Fox News last week. "Take out the 75 per cent of the dead weight cost, improve the actual experience of what it's supposed to do."

"He put an X through Twitter, I'll put a big X through the administrative state," he added. "So, that's where I'm at on common tactics with Elon."

Musk and Ramaswamy have mutual admiration for each other. Last week, Musk said that he found Ramaswamy to be a "very promising candidate."

Musk also seems impressed with Indian and Indian-origin executives who have made it to the top of several American tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and YouTube. On Sunday, he reacted to a Twitter post by the World of Statistics that had a long list of companies that have Indian-origin people in top positions. He called the feat "impressive."

Earlier in a tweet, he claimed that he plans to visit India in 2024 and that he "looks forward" to it.