Mother Jones illustration; Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. And nobody wants airplanes to fall out of the sky. But after Musk pushed out the head of the FAA and Donald Trump gutted the agency’s safety board, and Musk attempted to push air traffic controllers to quit, the worst domestic airline disaster since 2001 occurred.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. And nobody in their right mind wants him and his edgelord flunkies rooting around Treasury Department databases that contain private Social Security and Medicare data for all US citizens.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. And nobody wants him to use Treasury payment data to potentially gain an advantage over his competitors.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. And nobody wants him to use his newfound power to coerce South Africa into abandoning laws on Black investment instated after the fall of apartheid—at least when it comes to his company Starlink.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. And while most Americans don’t understand how little we spend on foreign aid (less than 1 percent of the federal budget, even as oligarch-friendly tax expenditures gobble far more)—few would begrudge that pittance if they knew it not only prevents famine and disease but also curbs the mass migration and terrorism that can result from such plagues. And that axing USAID, as Musk is gleefully doing, hands a soft-power bonanza to China.
Nobody voted for Elon Musk. Nobody.
Indeed, the concept of DOGE was only floated, vaguely, a few weeks before the election. It was met mostly with ridicule—it was named for a meme coin, after all—and that derision did not ebb when it became evident that Musk (and his erstwhile partner, Vivek Ramaswamy) hadn’t the faintest idea how government spending worked. They promised to cut the budget by $2 trillion, an amount that exceeds the government’s total discretionary spending in 2023.
The “waste” on federal grants, subsidies, and loans that Musk decries? Those are the same programs that helped him build Tesla and SpaceX. The federal workers that Musk suspects are woke deep state agents? Most serve either in the military or as nurses and doctors for the Veterans Health Administration; the next biggest cohorts are the workers who administer Social Security payments and the letter carriers who deliver the checks. Cutting jobs like these will result in mass chaos and a political bloodbath that nobody wants—especially vulnerable Republicans.
Elon Musk may have pleasured himself with his ability to slash Twitter’s workforce and turn it into a janky site for fascist fanboys. But America is not a software company. And letting a thin-skinned, Ketamine-fueled, video-game cheating, Nazi apologist billionaire take over the machinery of the United States is not something that anyone voted for. Finally Democrats in Congress are beginning to make this point. But citizens, too, must be full-throated. Because none of us, not a single one of us, voted for Elon Musk.
