The billionaire seems to be repeating his Twitter playbook. The question is why? And will he get away with it?

Elon Musk said the United States must “delete entire agencies” in order to achieve the Trump administration’s goals of drastically downsizing and restructuring the federal workforce.

Even as Mr Musk was speaking, workers at USAID ’s headquarters in Washington were being told not to come in the next day. Later on February 3rd Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, announced he had been made acting head of the agency while it faces “ reorganisation ”.