Barack Obama never thought he would be helping Elon Musk.
But one decision he made in the White House is haunting him.
And Barack Obama made one big mistake that became a surprising gift for Elon Musk.
Elon Musk sends the Washington, D.C. Swamp into a state of terror
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sent the Washington, D.C. Swamp into a frenzy over his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Musk is living up to his reputation as a disrupter.
“It is an amazing reaction,” Turley said. “You have people all over the beltway breathing in paper bags right now because the idea that you could bring in these people and they’re going to sort of think outside the box. That’s what Musk is known for.”
Turley pointed out that Musk fired most of Twitter’s staff when he bought the social company in 2022.
He made Twitter more efficient by getting rid of the dead weight despite some arguing he was getting rid of essential employees.
“So Musk is coming in here,” Turley explained. “And yes, the terror alert in Washington is quite astonishing, but this idea that this is a danger to democracy is rather odd. You have a President, he just ran on a pledge to shrink the government, to look for waste.”
Government employee unions and left-wing activist groups have filed lawsuits to get Musk and DOGE shut down.
One lawsuit claims that Musk has illegally accessed information at the Treasury Department as part of his audit of the payment system.
“The other thing, by the way, that you were correct on is a lot of what has happened in these court cases is purely speculative,” Turley stated. “Musk himself does not appear to have had access to this information. There’s a couple of people that have read-only access according to the Treasury Department.”
Barack Obama created the office that became Elon Musk’s DOGE
Trump created DOGE with an executive order during his first day in office.
Turley noted that DOGE was formed from an office that was created under former President Barack Obama.
“They were clever in a number of respects,” Turley said. “They took a department, an office that was created by Obama, 2014 they’ve repurposed it, and they moved it under the executive office.”
Obama created the United States Digital Service in 2014 to help with the Obamacare website.
The United States Digital Service became the U.S. DOGE Service under Trump’s executive order.
Obama created the vehicle for Musk to take a wrecking ball to the federal government.
Turley argued that Trump’s actions will face legal challenges but he’s better prepared for them this time term.
“The fact is that the President has had a rough going with a lot of judges who were not particularly sympathetic when he was a candidate,” Turley explained. “But ultimately, these cases have to go before the Supreme Court. We have a system of appeal. What’s different about this term, as opposed to the one that you and I helped cover the first time Trump was elected, is that Trump is wasting no time. I mean, this is, I mean, I’ve got to tell you, the entire city is on edge, though, just the pace of these changes, the flurry of executive orders, has everyone reeling.”
Donald Trump and Elon Musk got creative to go about reforming the federal government.
