Sen. Chris Van Hollen laid into Trump for his “great betrayal of the American people” by allowing Musk to illegally take a wrecking ball to our federal government.
During an appearance on this Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, host Margaret Brennan asked Van Hollen whether Democrats were being “too kneejerk to say that all this is unlawful.”
“No, this is unlawful,” Van Hollen rightfully responded. “In many of these cases, judges found that the plaintiffs did not have standing, but other parts of their opinion clearly indicated that Elon Musk did not have the authority to do what he’s doing. So we just talked about the great betrayal of the Ukrainian people. What we’re witnessing now is the great betrayal of the American people.”
“Candidate Trump said he was going to lower prices right now, what he’s doing is slashing important public services that help every American in order to finance a tax cut for the super rich, for Elon Musk and the billionaires.”
Brennan then asked Van Hollen about the emails that went out to federal employees, and management within the FBI and State Department telling employees not to respond to them. “Can people working at the State Department feel safe not responding? Are they putting their jobs at risk?”
“I don’t think so,” Van Hollen responded, “because what we are witnessing are illegal actions by Elon Musk and a number of courts, as you know, have issued temporary restraining orders on their efforts to seize important private information, but also on their overall conduct. So what the head of management at the State Department said is, Elon Musk doesn’t have the authority to require State Department employees to answer these questions.”
After Van Hollen pointed out that any firings have to happen in the chain of command, Brennan followed with this ridiculous question, which was again met with Van Hollen pointing out that what Musk is doing is illegal.
BRENNAN: Even though the President says he wants them to be more aggressive?
VAN HOLLEN: So the reality is we don’t- we don’t know what the President meant, but as you pointed out, you’ve got Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government and important services, and there’s no article four in the Constitution that gives Elon Musk that authority, and the way that he’s been sort of quote delegated authority is there- it is illegal, and the actions he’s taking are illegal, and we need to shut down this illegal operation.
We’ll see if Democrats use every tool they have to make that happen. In the meantime, they’re putting up with this appalling both-siderist nonsense from our corporate media pretending they’re overreacting to Trump and Musk’s destruction of our government, our economy and the rule of law.
