Tech billionaire Elon Musk is leading an effort to drastically cut the federal workforce, setting off court challenges and furious pushback by Democratic lawmakers, and CNN's Kasie Hunt laughed off a conservative guest for downplaying his role in Donald Trump's administration.
The administration gave millions of federal employees until midnight Thursday to decide on a "deferred resignation" offer, which a federal judge has temporarily suspended while court challenges play out over its legality, and Wall Street Journal reporter Annie Linskey said the move closely resembles the wrecking ball Musk took to Twitter's workforce after taking control of the social media platform he later renamed X.
"If you want to understand Elon Musk, the bible that people are reading is Walter Isaacson's book about Elon," said Wall Street Journal reporter Annie Linskey. "It's 600 pages, so it's a long, long slog to get through. But it's well-written, and what he's doing is sort of almost exactly what he did at Twitter, and the chapters about Twitter apply directly to his approach to USAID, which is to go in and fire an enormous amount of people. It remains to be seen, of course, whether those firings will hold up, hold up to legal scrutiny, but, like, this is what he has done in other places, and he's been pretty successful doing it."
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"I mean, there was a mandate for change and to shake things up," Linskey added, "and even if, even if down the road, judges decide that this is not something you can do, I think almost every person in America will have learned that Donald Trump came to town. There's a new sheriff in town, and things are going to be much different, and that's that is the future. That's what he's trying to get across, and he's been successful."
Hunt had played a clip earlier in the segment showing popular podcaster Joe Rogan praising the tech mogul's purge of federal employees as a "business approach" to government, saying the tech mogul has already uncovered “massive amounts” of “corruption and waste,” but the CNN host questioned Musk's management of X, which has been bleeding users and value since he took over.
"My question is, do we want do we want this applied to, you know, a mistake at a social media company?" Hunt said. "The stakes are a lot lower than when you're working with the Social Security number and bank account numbers of every American that files taxes."
Republican strategist Brad Todd pooh-poohed those concerns about Musk's outsize role in the Trump administration and his access to the Treasury Department's payment system, and other sensitive government data, saying he was no different than other government officials.
"I find it interesting, though, that some new people are now worried about unelected bureaucrats having too much power," Todd said. "As conservatives, we've been worried about that for a long time. So I welcome everybody else to the party."
Hunt laughed at his comparison.
"I don't know that these guys constitute bureaucrats, I mean," she said.
"He's a temporary employee," Todd countered. "He's a federal government employee."
"Okay," Hunt replied, and then pivoted toward a commercial break. "Coming up here on CNN this morning, president Trump wants transgender athletes out of women's sports, what that might mean for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics."
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