CNN’s Scott Jennings defended billionaire Elon Musk’s influence over the Republican Party and claimed people other than President Joe Biden have been running the government for four years Sunday morning on State of the Union.
Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswmany have been tapped to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to help Trump cut out what he sees as needless government spending. However, Musk owns perhaps the most influential social media platform on the globe in X.
The South African native has also weighed in heavily on policy ahead of Trump’s inauguration. His influence on House Republicans was apparent last week as lawmakers passed an 11th-hour bill to avert a government shutdown with his input.
Sunday morning, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Jennings to weigh in on critiques that Musk was acting as a de facto leader or a co-president-elect.
“Democrats are saying he’s the real president-elect,” Bash said of Musk. She asked Jennings, “A lot of Republicans are saying that’s not true, but thank goodness he did what he did. Is this going to wear thin with Donald Trump soon?”
In his response, Jennings said Biden was so diminished cognitively that he was never truly running the government during his term:
Musk was very instrumental in [Trump’s] victory. And I hear Democrats criticizing the idea that we have unelected people with too much influence over the government. I invite them to pick up the Wall Street Journal from this week and find out that unelected people have been running the government for the last four years. I hear Democrats criticizing, criticizing the influence of billionaires on our politics. When you’ve got this Soros punk running around collecting Democrat politicians like my kids collect Pokemon cards. So I think all the criticism of Musk coming from the left is totally hypocritical, totally over the top. And he is doing something interesting, bringing some transparency to the federal government.
Watch above via CNN.
