A stammering and defensive response from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to a grilling on Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) minions taking control of the country's finances drew a brutal response on MSNBC on Thursday morning.
Late Wednesday, Johnson was grilled by Chard Pergram of Fox News and accused of handing over the power of House to control congressional funding to the unelected billionaire; in effect, ceding the chamber's Article 1 powers.
That led Johnson to attempt to explain, "What is happening right now is there is a gross overreaction from the media about what is happening. The executive branch of government in our system has the right to evaluate how executive branch agencies are operating and to ensure that not only the intent of Congress in funding mechanisms, but also the stewardship of precious American taxpayer dollars is being handled well. That's what they're doing by putting a pause on some of these agencies and by evaluating them, by doing these internal audits."
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After sharing the clip on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-host Joe Scarborough called out Johnson handing over his responsibilities to Musk.
"That's interesting. That's not a threat to Article 1?" Scarborough asked. "Listen, I'm a small government conservative, I'm all for audits, I'm all for going through things and see, you know, use best practices, see how you can save as much of the taxpayers dollars, you can save it, and running it efficiently, but he [Musk] went on X and basically decided he was going to shut down USAID, shutting down an entire department that was founded and authorized by the United States Congress. So this is a violation of Article One powers."
"Now, when they let an unelected bureaucrat shut down an entire agency because he doesn't like and he goes on, you know, midnight rants on X, that's that's one of the grossest retreats, one of the one of the most outrageous retreats from Article One power that I've seen in Washington in a very long time," he added.
You can watch below or at the link here.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
