File this under surprise, surprise, or maybe under Aunt Jemima, what took you so long? Because if there is one indisputable prediction that could be made about Elon Musk, it would be that some Republican senators, the ones keeping their mouthes shut for now, would eventually rebel. Not that there aren’t plenty of Musk sycophants, and you’ll hear from the worst of them, Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) as well. But first check out the closed-door White House Wiles meeting.
Republican senators vented their concerns about tech billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive approach to freezing federal spending and cutting government jobs during a private meeting with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.
Gathered in the historic Mansfield Room outside the Senate chamber, some GOP senators complained about what they view as a lack of transparency about what Musk and his team of engineers are doing at federal agencies.
They flagged cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which fired 1,400 employees Monday, and said Musk’s team hadn’t responded to their requests for information, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
“Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,” she said.
Collins argued a methodical approach to reforming government would be better than what she called Musk’s “sledgehammer approach.”
Actually, it’s a chainsaw approach. A sledgehammer approach would be vastly preferable. And sometimes it’s a “chainsaw taken to a silk rug” approach, in the words of one disabled veteran who got laid off from his job three weeks into Trump’s brave new world of a second administration.
I do love the irony of Collins arguing for a methodical approach when she, along with all the others, voted for the iconoclasts with the wrecking balls. Did she never hear Maya Angelou’s advice, “When people tell you who they are, listen to them the first time.” Collins knew. They all knew. But Roger Marshall loves him some Elon. And the facts be damned. I wonder what’s up with that?
Roger Marshall: "If I was Elon, I'm asking him to double down, not go slower … think about what Elon did with Twitter. He fired 80% of the people, he changed the name of it, and now today it is worth twice as much as it was before." (This is a lie.) pic.twitter.com/zewAdLc3yN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 26, 2025
So what’s the deal here? Marshall is:
- So uninformed that he believes that Musk doubled the value of Twitter, rather than destroying it and losing $44 billion?
- He knows the truth but thinks we don’t?
- He wants to suck up to Elon because he sees Elon and autocracy as the future of this country?
- All of the above?
And Marshall, FYI, is a medical doctor, who voted for RFK Jr. to head up HHS. I fear that there’s a special place for him and Bill Cassidy in Hell and if there isn’t, there should be.
Wiles acknowledged the GOP senators’ concerns and urged them to contact her directly if they have any problems as a result of Musk’s blitz through the federal workforce.
We have heard this before, that Wiles is going to put a leash on Musk and control him. She reportedly limited Musk’s access to Trump. I wonder when we might stop hearing it and start seeing it? Because to all intents and purposes, Musk led the Cabinet meeting yesterday, not the titular president.
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