As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) methodically assesses federal departments one by one, Democrats have been having absolute meltdowns, claiming Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, who heads the advisory committee, is in effect trying to stage a “coup.”
“So at some point, we’ve got to wake up beyond party lines for all Americans to see what’s going on here in this rapidly expanding and accelerating coup,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) claimed during a recent interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid.
On the Senate side, we’ve heard from, among others, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who stated without evidence last week, “It is clear that unqualified and unaccountable people have seized control of the flow of taxpayer funds and a trove of extremely sensitive data. They are seizing the tools you need for a coup.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) used another key buzzword when she talked about what Musk and his group were allegedly doing.
“When unelected billionaires start ransacking our government offices, this is not business as usual,” she proclaimed during a Senate Democrat press conference on Capitol Hill.
“Nope, nothing is normal. We are living a nightmare created by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. We need to wake up. We need to use every tool we have to fight back,” she said.
The problem with these complaints is that anytime a new administration takes office, especially if there has been a party switch, you typically see sweeping changes made at the department level by unelected people (cabinet heads, etc.) who are doing so in keeping with the agenda set forth by the new president.
The concept of DOGE came out of a discussion between Trump and Musk in the summer of 2024, and when Trump announced in September that he would create such a department if elected — with the goal of rooting out waste, fraud and abuse — that he’d be open to putting Musk at the head of it.
Musk frequently appeared at campaign events with Trump, and DOGE was something they both routinely brought up in interviews and speeches. And after Trump won the election, he reiterated his commitment to it and followed through with an executive order after his inauguration.
“This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” it reads.
So no, the “coup” and “unelected” accusations have no basis in merit. But when you think about it, it sure is rich that Democrats are making these claims for reasons I’ll explain below.
For the four years he was in office, Democrats (and their media allies) tried to cover for then-President Joe Biden on the issue of his cognitive health by telling us he was sharp as a tack and could run circles around people younger than him.
In reality, as we’ve learned over the last eight months or so, things were so bad that his handlers ran a tight ship in trying to limit his interactions with people, not just with the press but also with members of Congress and world leaders.
“Apparently, it’s a ‘shadow government’ when a president openly tasks Elon Musk with rooting out waste in the federal government, but not when America spends four years with a president in extreme cognitive decline who has everyone around him making the decisions for him,” Greg Price, a member of the Trump 2024 campaign’s rapid response team, wrote in response to the outrage being whipped up by angry Democrats.
As the old saying goes, truer words were never spoken.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
