Elon Musk is once again at the center of a hypocritical storm that the left stirred up. Have you noticed the drumbeat from the left lately is the outrage that Musk has too much power for someone who wasn’t elected? “Nobody elected Elon Musk,” they say.
“The American people did not sign up for this,” CNN’s Harry Enten lamented Wednesday. “They voted in Donald Trump. They did not vote in Elon Musk.”
Enten pointed to polling that shows that 53% of Americans — a “clear majority,” according to Enten — oppose Musk’s role in the Trump administration.
“Just 36% of independents support the idea of Elon Musk having a key role in the Trump administration,” he continued. “So the bottom line when it comes to all of this and Elon Musk being everywhere, it seems, in the federal government, trying to trim down the federal deficit, the American folks, simply put, do not want Elon Musk having a key role in the Trump administration.”
Enten continued, “He may be the king of X or Twitter, but he ain't the king of the United States of America. And if he were the king, he'd be a very unpopular king.” He then showed polling indicating that Musk’s popularity has tanked the more he has gotten into politics.
Do you know why I couldn’t care less about people complaining about Musk being unelected? The same people complaining about Musk’s power, calling him “President Musk” and all that, just spent four years watching Jill Biden and an unelected inner circle of advisors running the country on Joe Biden’s behalf.
But what the left conveniently overlooks is that the American people technically did cast their votes for Elon Musk to make our government more efficient.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it best on Wednesday, responding to the violent rhetoric coming from the left about USAID.
If you heard that type of violent, enticing rhetoric from our side of the aisle, from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, I think there would be a lot more outrage in this room today. It's unacceptable, the comments that have been made by these Democrat leaders, and frankly, they don't even know what they're talking about, because President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people to make this government more efficient. He campaigned across this country with Elon Musk, vowing that Elon was going to head up the Department of Government Efficiency. And the two of them, with a great team around them, were going to look at the receipts of this federal government and ensure it's accountable to American taxpayers. That's all that is happening here.
Related: Did Elon Musk Hint That Several Government Departments May Get the Axe?
“And for Democrat officials to incite violence and encourage Americans to take to the streets is incredibly alarming, and they should be held accountable for that rhetoric,” she concluded.
She’s right. Trump was talking about making Elon an advisor not long after he endorsed Trump’s candidacy last summer. In September, while speaking to the Economic Club of New York, Trump spoke about tasking Musk with "conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms."
"This will save trillions of dollars," Trump said. "It's massive."
Musk went on to campaign with Trump, promising to do exactly that. So, yes, we voted for Trump to put Musk in charge of making the government more efficient. Musk didn’t just stumble into power; the American people knowingly put Trump in a position to have Musk clean our government of waste.
