Question for Republicans. What do you think about Musk being given the access that he's been granted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

According to an internal email sent by Elon Musk to employees, X is 'barely breaking even,' citing stagnant user growth and underwhelming revenue. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, a deal financed in part by $13 billion in debt.Jan 27, 2025

New York
CNN
—
The social media platform formerly known as Twitter is worth almost 80% less than two years ago when Elon Musk bought it, according to estimates from investment giant Fidelity.

Yeah, a real success story.

Tesla is next…

Tesla sells are down in both North America and China. They are depending on the yet to be released and make a profit driverless technology. I’m too old to trust driverless vehicles,so I will leave that to the young. My 21-year old said he want be using any driverless taxis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

To answer your question the Federal bureaucracy sits squarely under the Executive Branch. It belongs to that one of the three branches of the government, it does not sit under Congress or SCOTUS. Which is why, for example, agencies and bureaucrats routinely deny to answer questions in Congressional probes. It can be legitimately argued by constitutional scholars that some of the laws Congress passed affecting the bureaucracy are actually unlawful. The constitution makes clear the Executive branch runs the government, not Congress or SCOTUS.

That is most likely why there's this state of paralysis and no real confidence in lawsuits doing anything more than temporarily halt the EOs affecting the bureaucracy.

As for OP's question, I don't consider myself a Republican but I approve most of what I see Musk doing if just because all his actions is bringing far more transparency into an extremely opaque system of agencies and unelected senior bureaucrats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

To answer your question the Federal bureaucracy sits squarely under the Executive Branch. It belongs to that one of the three branches of the government, it does not sit under Congress or SCOTUS. Which is why, for example, agencies and bureaucrats routinely deny to answer questions in Congressional probes. It can be legitimately argued by constitutional scholars that some of the laws Congress passed affecting the bureaucracy are actually unlawful. The constitution makes clear the Executive branch runs the government, not Congress or SCOTUS.

That is most likely why there's this state of paralysis and no real confidence in lawsuits doing anything more than temporarily halt the EOs affecting the bureaucracy.

As for OP's question, I don't consider myself a Republican but I approve most of what I see Musk doing if just because all his actions is bringing far more transparency into an extremely opaque system of agencies and unelected senior bureaucrats.

I find it hilarious that folks think Musk is being more transparent about government. Particularly when government undergoes multiple audits, files hundreds of reports, attends and host numerous conferences and presentations and use to have lots of meetings (viewable on C-SPAN) to inform on exactly what is going on. Now things are just being destroyed and folks fired but people have no real idea WHY except because Elon said so or they are Trump enemies.

It’s like because some people didn’t pay attention they believe there was no transparency yet because Trump keeps talking (about nothing) people believe they now have some.😁

[Anonymous]

What if Musk’s decision enrich him, but weaken the US? Does he have the ability to parse the information and make choices that don’t hurt the US? He’s not a diplomat and he does not seem to be concerned if his choices empower China or some other world power.

And what happens when eventually there’s a democrat in office who brings in their own expert to gut a government agency? If you permit it to go on now, you can’t argue it’s wrong when the other party does it. This is a big precedent being set.

[Anonymous]

Musk is going to sell USA’s secrets to whatever country or individual pays him the most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At this point it ai beyond obvious that structures and process have been used to entrench the status quo. Congress nor the American voter have the stomach to make needed changes.

An American citizen (immigrant!) is working to improve serious problems. *If* somehow he manages to deliver, it will be one of the greatest gifts ever received by our country. Entrenched interests have had decades to fix these problems. They’ve failed. Might as well try this. Just give him and his team a blanket pardon before Trump leaves office.

Do you think maybe that Musk himself might have some entrenched interests of his own? Or do you think he’s doing this out of the goodness of his heart?

Of course the potential exists that he has his own entrenched interests. But I’m told time and time again that government employees are not the enemy, but rather noble civil servants seeking to serve the public good. Perhaps Musk can be given the same deference?

Again, does this particularly bother me? I don’t think so (this doesn’t mean I’m a fan of it, either). If he can actually slow down the spending after decades of drunken spending by Congress on both sides, the outcome might be worth the pain. I just know that I don’t trust anybody in Congress to actually be able to deliver on meaningful, impactful government reform.

Less than 100 years ago the British Empire was the mightiest the world had ever seen. Today they are on an apparent irreversible path to irrelevance and inability to care for their own people. I fear the same fate awaits us absent drastic change that cannot be delivered from within the system.

If it’s all going to sh*t anyways, might as well try something unconventional.

Sure. But he would need to do so by applying for a government job and going through an interview process, background check, reference check, etc. and then, after proving himself trustworthy, undergo a security clearance before having any sort of access to this information. Same for “Bigballs” and the rest of his teenage friends.

No. Why is that only people who apply for jobs and use formal channels get the deference of noble service and desire for the common good? Indeed, the hiring system, like any other, is designed to protect itself by ensuring that new hires are largely aligned with best interest (no different than say college faculty hiring or the NFL screening new potential owners). Outside reform may be precisely what is needed.

[Anonymous]

If they are so interested in cutting the deficit then they should also be looking at more ways to raise revenues. Biden and the Dems tried to do this by increasing the IRS budget so that the department can actually do its job as well as to crack down on tax cheats. This would raise billions.

But of course, the GOP cut some of the funding in the IRA bill and Trump wants to slash the IRS budget to shreds.
It’s so stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

But Twitter is no longer making money so not sure about this statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He's infiltrated OPM, the US treasury, has access to Social Security information, which means information on pretty much every worker in the United States.

Is this something you support? And if not, what do you plan to do about it? This is a Pandora box you opened.

Despite all that, Democrats are most focused on USAID. That's what matters the most to them.

I don't think so. They've sued DOGE over it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are loving it on conservative Reddit.

r/Conservative is a bubble of RWNJ delusions and they would honestly staple their own heads to the floor if they thought it would "trigger the libs."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a $1.83 trillion budget deficit last year. Unsustainable. Musk thinks he can cut a trillion in spending. Good, let’s see what he comes up with. His experience at Twitter showed him that three quarters of the people employed there were useless at best.

But Twitter is no longer making money so not sure about this statement.

And Musk had to quietly re-hire a bunch of people to backfill for the ones that he fired, and even to this day a lot of Twitter microservices and scaling are nowhere near as good as they were, not to mention they are completely overrun by bots and trolls violating Twitter ToS and his team is completely incapable of dealing with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

Presidential pardons have been part of a President's powers since the beginning of our Democracy. Whatever Elon is doing (and we don't know exactly what he's doing, do we?) has not. It's unprecedented and unconstitutional. If what's going on now doesn't tell you why those pardons were needed, then you're not paying attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

What do you mean, "ground shifted?" Do you think Biden's pardons in any way justify what's going on with Musk right now? They don't.

And Biden's pardons were given in order to keep Trump from going on a deranged unwarranted witch hunt after people who committed no crimes. Not that he isn't trying to do that anyhow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve seen zero justification for turning over decision-making and control of our government to an unelected private individual. You cannot replace Congress or our co-equal branches of government balances this way. If Congress doesn’t act, I expect a lot of this will be challenged in court (not the best because it’s costly and slow).

What actual legal authority is there for our government to operate this way? Seems to be exactly what the founders sought to avoid (centralized power at the hands of the wealthy few).

Imagine if Biden had installed someone like George Soros inside the US government to start controlling everything. It would be completely unacceptable (and I suspect we’d hear that from GOP members of Congress).

I think it is cute that you think this question matters in February of 2024. We’re less than weeks removed from Fauci, Milley and members of Congress having received full, robust pardons covering their time in office exercising properly vested governmental authority.

The ground shifted a couple of weeks ago when Biden issued those pardons (whether you think they were justified or not).

Those pardons have nothing to do with inserting Elon Musk in a position of complete control over our government systems with no authority.

Dr. Fauci retired over a year ago and served in the government under multiple administrations. Has no connection to what’s going on now under Trump—but great attempt at whataboutism!