'Pure lunacy': Dem says Musk's DOGE is in 'kids playground' — and Senate will ignore them
A former Democratic lawmaker took tech billionaire Elon Musk to task on Wednesday while calling into question how much authority he will actually wield in Washington once he assumes his new quasi-government role.
CNN contributor Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative, made the comments during an appearance on CNN, where he also gave props to Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles for seeing that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were placed in roles in the new administration with no actual power.
“She put Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk kind of out to pasture,” Sellers said. “She put them in the kids playground, she put them over there in the sandbox.”
A clear example of that is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which Trump tasked the billionaire duo to lead, Sellers added.
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“DOGE for example, has no statutory authority has no budget, has no employees, and all they can do is literally just go on Twitter and say we should do X, Y and Z," he said.
The CNN political commentator followed that up with a jab at how he believes Musk will be received on Capitol Hill.
“DOGE has the same amount of authority that I have right now in Columbia, South Carolina, as a Democrat who voted for Kamala Harris, so that that's first,” Sellers, said. “If you think a United States senator is going to listen to Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy on what they should cut, then that's just pure lunacy.”
He continued his takedown of Musk by spelling out what he sees as the “hypocrisy” of Republicans by tasking the billionaire with slashing government spending and personnel after he “grew a multi-trillion dollar business off the back of American taxpayers through subsidies and grants.”
“If you want to start with eliminating those government programs, if you want to start with cuts, start with SpaceX, start with Tesla,” he said.
Watch the clip below or at this link.