Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) put forward a colorful turn of phrase on Fox Business to explain why he was still on board with tech billionaire Elon Musk's move to dismantle large parts of the federal government through his Department of Government Efficiency task force.
"We're not talking enough — we're talking about the things we need to do to get high prices down, but we're not tying them together for the American people, and the Treasury secretary is very good at that," Kennedy told former President Donald Trump adviser Larry Kudlow. "Most of the publicity has been on the spending cuts, and look, I'm all for them."
"I think Elon Musk is a rock star," he continued. "The tofu crowd is mad, but you know, when you trim fat, pigs squeal. That's just the way the world works."
ALSO READ: 'Absolutely unconscionable': Ex-Republican demands Trump removed from office after fight
Under Musk, a huge number of departments across the board have instituted mass layoffs or frozen government contracts, some of them for services already rendered.
In many cases, the cuts seem to have occurred without proper analysis of whether the jobs were essential, as many of these terminated employees, including workers with the National Nuclear Security Administration, food and medical device safety inspectors for the Food and Drug Administration, bird flu experts with the Department of Agriculture, workers with the National Park Service, and most recently experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told to come back to work.
Meanwhile, many of the savings touted by DOGE had to be quietly retracted after journalists dug into them and found they had been misstated. And DOGE is facing a series of lawsuits, including some challenging their right to access sensitive agency information.
A new report indicated that Trump convened a meeting of his Cabinet this week and told them Musk doesn't have authority to force them to fire anyone, and they have final say over those decisions.
