‘Let the scams roll’: Senator floats new theory behind Musk's desire to gut agency

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came out swinging against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his chair of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, for gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – a watchdog agency that she helped create more than a decade ago.

Warren, who was instrumental in establishing the bureau during the Obama administration, launched a fierce pushback Monday on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow of the new administration’s decision to bring it down less than a month after Trump's return to the White House.

During her appearance, the Massachusetts senator attacked Trump and Musk’s assault on the consumer bureau as unconstitutional, before offering her suggestion behind what she thinks the tech billionaire’s real motivation is for shutting it down.

“This is an agency that literally over the 13 years it's been out there working, has recovered more than $21 billion that these big financial institutions have cheated people out of, and actually returned the money to the people that they cheated,” Warren said. "So, what Donald Trump has done, saying he really wanted to lower costs, is he's taken this agency that is the cop on the beat for the cheaters, and when they get caught cheating, makes them give the money back, and he said, ‘cops step aside, look the other way, we don't care how big the scam is, we don't care who's getting hurt, just everybody put your pins down, fold your hands, put them in your lap and let the scams roll on.”

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She added that the route the Trump administration has taken to kill the bureau is not legal.

“Congress created this agency,” she said. “There were laws that were passed...they passed a bill in the House, passed a bill in the Senate, did a conference, got the thing through. It was signed into law by the President of the United States and only Congress – not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, not some 22-year-old programmer – only Congress can shut this agency down.”

She told Maddow that while GOP lawmakers “beat on their chests” and claim to be in favor of shutting down the bureau “they don’t actually want a real vote on that – a lot of them don't actually want to stand next to exactly what they're trying to do.”

But while Trump, Musk “and a handful of 22-year-olds” took matters into their own hands over the weekend and did just that, Warren said Monday the move is illegal.

“It’s not only not legal and not popular, really, it’s a case of saying they want to fire the financial cops, but they'd like for nobody really to notice that,” Warren said. “And particularly Elon Musk would like nobody to notice that he just wants to get rid of them before he launches his new financial product.”

Watch the clip below or at this link.