Timber Is this really the guy Republicans want running the show?
Elon Musk—clad in ridiculous sunglasses, his typical black MAGA hat, and a t-shirt that reads “I’m not procrastinating, I’m doing side quests”—took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, brandishing a chainsaw gifted to him by Argentinian President Javier Milei. It was a reference, of course, to the dramatic and seemingly indiscriminate cuts the billionaire has made across the United States government. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” Musk declared.
Like his kitchen sink “joke” when he first took over Twitter, the 53-year-old billionaire seemed to regard this prop comedy as the height of humor—the kind of hilarity that would never be allowed in liberal America. “The left wanted to make comedy illegal,” Musk said at CPAC, where he received a raucous welcome. “It’s like, legalize comedy—yeah!”
Musk, the world’s richest man, looked ridiculous. But he sounded even more foolish, as he accused Democrats of committing “treason” and told Newsmax host Rob Schmitt that he has “become meme,” in a regrettable spin on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s famous saying.
“I’m living the meme,” said Musk, who, again, is 53-years-old. “There’s living the dream, and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening, you know?”
Indeed, Musk and his boss, Donald Trump, are implementing a kind of government by meme: a reign of trolling and open grift that is at once profoundly unserious and gravely dangerous. The tech billionaire has been the driving force of this overhaul, as his Department of Government Oversight—or DOGE, itself a reference to the internet joke and memecoin—guts federal agencies and helps Trump consolidate power in his historically wealthy Cabinet. And while this political style is borne of the most giddily nihilistic corners of the internet, the real-world consequences of Musk’s blitz have already been profound—and yet to be fully realized.
The response from the administration, and leading Republicans, to concerns about an unelected, remarkably conflicted billionaire and his team of young edgelords taking that gilded chainsaw to the government? Don’t worry about it. “The American taxpayers don’t have to be concerned about any of this,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News this week, days after a 24-year-old DOGE staffer arrived at IRS headquarters unannounced, seeking access to systems containing Americans’ private financial and banking information.
Musk’s CPAC appearance Thursday was, if nothing else, a glimpse into the man the Trump administration is asking Americans to blindly trust with their government: “My mind,” Musk said, “is a storm.”
He has his critics, of course—even in MAGA world, where Steve Bannon has condemned Musk as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” who wants to “play-act as God.” But, appearing immediately after Musk at CPAC Thursday, Bannon mostly pulled his punches and threw up what appeared to be a Nazi salute like the one Musk seemingly extended at an inauguration rally—a reminder, perhaps, that for all the divisions and rivalries among members of Trump’s movement, they are all wading in the same ideological direction.
If Musk’s act went over well on the CPAC stage, it may be getting less favorable reviews elsewhere. Polls this week suggested Musk and his DOGE efforts are broadly unpopular with the American public, with lower favorability ratings than many of the agencies and programs the billionaire has worked to gut.
Musk might dismiss that opposition: “I’m not sure how much of the left is even real,” he said at CPAC. But the frustration with DOGE seems to be real—and not just on the left. While Musk was making a spectacle of himself on stage Thursday, Republican Representative Rich McCormick was facing a booing town hall crowd in his home district in Georgia, which Trump won by more than twenty points in November.
“You are doing us a disservice,” an attendee said, telling the congressman that he did “not stand up for us.”
“You don’t think I’m gonna stand up for you?” he replied, to shouts and jeers.
The scene hinted at uneasiness with the power the Trump administration has taken from Congress—and frustration at the way the president has wielded it, jeopardizing basic government functions like air traffic control and the livelihoods of federal workers, many of whom are veterans.
Some Republicans have begun to push back. “Congress has to do their work,” Ohio Congressman Troy Balderson said at a local chamber of commerce lunch Thursday, expressing concern that Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s siege as “getting out of control.” “I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of meritocracy. Not the indiscriminate firing of people,” one anonymous GOP aide lamented to Politico, which reported that a “growing number of congressional Republicans are desperately trying to back-channel with White House officials” to rein in DOGE.
But this private consternation, anonymous hand-wringing, and timid criticism is woefully inadequate against the scale of the threat this administration poses: In Trump and Musk, we have two demagogues unilaterally moving to dismantle the American government and its democratic system. And yet all Republicans can muster, when they’re not openly egging on this power-grab, is an anemic expression of unease? It’s outrageous, and their constituents should be telling them as much every time they set foot back in their districts. Because right now, each one of them—from the cheerleaders like Mike Johnson to the pearl-clutchers like Lisa Murkowski—is allowing this farce to continue.
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