by WorldTribune Staff, February 14, 2025 Real World News
With every dollar of waste Elon Musk and DOGE uncover, the rage meter goes up for Democrats and their major media allies.
Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin has introduced the “Nobody Elected Elon Musk Act” which decries what he says is Musk’s expanding influence within the federal government.
New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a widely ridiculed rant, accused Musk of leading “an unelected shadow government” that “is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”
Historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson, in a Feb. 13 analysis, laid out several Musk mythologies that are making the rounds in leftist circles:
Musk has no right to cut USAID
“Elon Musk and his team are not cutting any federal programs. They are auditors. They were given legal authority under a presidential executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),” Hanson noted. “Ultimately, Musk can propose program cuts, but Trump holds the authority to approve or reject them. He may or may not act on all, some, or none of the DOGE recommendations.”
No one elected Musk
As many presidential advisers who came before him were, Musk was appointed by an elected president to run an agency that does not require Senate confirmation.
“Musk is as legally legitimate as the national security advisor and his National Security Council, none of whom require Senate confirmation,” Hanson wrote. “Does the left believe former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, who made decisions far more pivotal than Musk, had no authority to do so because he too was neither elected nor confirmed by the Senate?”
Giving power to a private citizen billionaire is dangerous
“In fact, Musk has far more legal authority than did FDR’s best friend Harry Hopkins. He moved into the White House and de facto set U.S. foreign assistance policies toward Stalin’s Russia,” Hanson noted. “Musk’s position is more akin to past captains of industry like Henry Ford, Henry Kaiser, and William Knudson appointed by FDR to run the wartime economy. None of them were either elected or confirmed by the Senate.”
Musk is ending foreign aid
“Hardly,” Hanson wrote. “Foreign aid, which in all its manifestations in various cabinets and agencies is reaching nearly $80 billion per year, is not ending. One of its distribution centers, USAID, may be vastly curtailed or bundled into the State Department. But the important bulk grants to allies like Israel or friends like Egypt or aid in times of famine relief and natural disasters to the needy abroad will remain. And these programs will be strengthened and saved precisely because they will be trimmed of skimmers and scammers.”
China will be delighted by Musk’s USAID cuts
China will likely be upset by the cuts, Hanson noted, as “Beijing finds its own concrete development projects far more effective than USAID imposing American cultural agendas abroad. Beijing likes self-destructive American aid like LGBTQ activism, transgender chauvinism, and anti-conservative American media. Does anyone believe China was angry that the USAID created a vast gender studies program at the University of Kabul or had the U.S. embassy there advertise its pride activism, or itself snagged $40 million to engineer deadly viruses? So, China will be quite unhappy that organs like the New York Times and the BBC are having their USAID subsidies ended. After all, they, along with China, so often vilified their shared existential nemesis—Donald J. Trump.”
I just don’t even know what to say anymore when I see this kind of stuff. Is it Saturday Night Live or real life? Does anyone really think this is the future of the country? This is the only alternative to Trump’s America? It’s just so depressing. https://t.co/5qJihgREAt
— Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) February 5, 2025
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