Lawrence O’Donnell flipped the script on Donald Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk to the not-yet-official Department of Government Efficiency, with the bitterly anti-Trump MSNBC host calling it not a promotion — but a “humiliating demotion” for the X- owner and CEO of Tesla.

“Donald Trump has announced that he would give Elon Musk a job that does not exist and will last at most 18 months,” O’Donnell said Tuesday evening. Worst of all, Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, was assigned a working partner who, like Musk, has never worked in government before: Vivek Ramaswamy, who is not even a billionaire.”

O’Donnell did not clarify why Ramaswamy’s relative wealth was relevant, but also mocked Musk for not getting “his own press release from Donald Trump,” noting that he had to “share” this with the millionaire.

“Musk got the first shared press release on Donald Trump’s nomination announcements,” O’Donnell said. “Even (Pete Hegseth), who isn’t even the richest person at Fox, got his own press release… That’s right, a Fox weekend morning host for the Secretary of Defense.”

O’Donnell’s show was taped before Trump announced Cabinet nominations for Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio and Matt Gaetz on Wednesday, calling Tuesday the “dumbest day yet in Trump’s personnel announcements.” He also noted that his other Cabinet appointments were for permanent federal departments – while DOGE is not.

“If you head a department within the U.S. government, you become a Cabinet secretary,” the lawyer explained. “The Ministry of Defense is headed by the Minister of Defence, the Ministry of Finance by the Minister of Finance, and so on. Creating such a department would require an act of Congress and a budget… the Department of Government Efficiency, which has no office, desk or desk chair anywhere in the government, will likely be housed in the Executive Office Building next to the White House … this could mean Musk gets to send budget ideas to the as-yet-unnamed director of (the budget office), a real job in the White House.”

O’Donnell then made his prediction about a short, Musk-led DOGE regime: “If all goes well for the staff in the Trump administration – unlike the last one – Elon Musk will be the first to be kicked out because Trump already kicked him out. the press release announcing his appointment to a non-existent job.”

In the initial announcement, Trump insisted that the DOGE program would complete its work by July 4, 2026. Musk at least seemed optimistic about getting the job done at the time.

Watch the full MSNBC video above.

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