LEMON DROP | Is the GOP Afraid of Elon Musk?! - With The Bulwark's Joe Perticone
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How do Republican lawmakers publicly praise Elon Musk but privately express concern about Doge?
So how do Republicans really feel about what's going on at Doge, about Elon Musk? Because you know they will say one thing in public and do another thing in private, as we saw with Donald Trump in both 2016, 2020, and 2024. So this article caught my eye. It's from The Bulwark, and it is Joe Perticone. And the article says, the GOP says they love Elon. Privately, they're expressing concerns. Joe Perticone. joins me now. Hi, Joe. How are you? Thanks for joining.
I'm doing great. How are you?
So talk to me about this. Is this different than with Trump where his supporters or consultants would say one thing in a green room during the election and then another when they got in front of cameras? Are they doing the same thing with Elon Musk now? Is it different?
I think it's a little bit different and a bit more severe and a bit more craven because it's not really them saying on Fox or on Twitter that they love what he's doing and then going back to their closed door meetings with each other and bashing him. Instead, it's them responding to constituents. So we got our hands on more than a dozen letters from people who reach out to their member of Congress or their senator, either by phone or email or whatever, being like, What are you doing? What is Elon doing? Is my data secure? And they sent these very formal letters, which are drafted by their staff, to basically say, we're monitoring this closely. We're very concerned. We don't know what's going to happen here.
And That's them showing empathy with their constituents because they depend on these people for votes while doing something else in public because they don't want to piss off the boss, you know, Donald Trump. So this is, I think, a bit more severe in that it's them saying one thing to their constituents and another to the general public or to the primary audience of the White House.
So you think it's a little bit more insidious, you think? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Is this more, though, when I read some of the letters and some of the things you sent, I'm just wondering, is this more than, you know, Susan Collins, I'm very strongly concerned or like a strongly worded letter I'm going to send? Like, what does this actually accomplish by them sending out? And these are form letters, right?
Yeah. And it really just assures their constituents that their data is safe or we're going to make sure that something bad doesn't happen. But it's actually an acknowledgement that there is concern about this among voters. If you look at some of the common thread between a lot of the people who sent these letters, they were Ben Klein in Virginia, Rob Whitman in Virginia. These guys have really huge constituencies that are federal workers where Doge and all their activities are really unpopular. This is also a big thing for the biggest voting bloc, which are seniors. The baby boomer peak birth year, I think, was 1957, 58. So a lot of those folks are going to be filing for Social Security for the very first time this year.
And so if there's financial uncertainty about this unelected billionaire rifling through their information or maybe even potentially disrupting how these Social Security payments get processed, that kind of financial uncertainty is a death sentence when it comes to midterm elections. And it's obvious that right away they're already worried about the ramifications of it.
What do you mean by right away they're already worried about it?
The fact that they're responding in this way to these constituents, they know that like Elon Musk is doing what the MAGA right wanted, but this isn't really what any voter asked for. No voter asked to have their social security information and payment systems tinkered with by some guy who's not been confirmed by the Senate, whose data security practices are up in the air that are unchecked from any kind of oversight capability. So them acknowledging that, oh, this is a concern, we need to keep an eye on this. It shows the hypocrisy in the way they act publicly, but it also shows they're concerned that this could snowball into bad electoral consequences.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
How do Republican lawmakers publicly praise Elon Musk but privately express concern about Doge?
0:13–5:34
2
Why are constituents sending formal letters to Congress about Elon Musk and data security?
5:34–12:31
3
Which voter groups are most worried about Musk's influence over Social Security and federal systems?
12:31–17:32