After listening to Elon Musk complain at length about “unelected” influences on American politics, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace cut in to say, “Irony died while he was talking.”
Wallace pointed out, “the only unelected party in any of this is Elon Musk.” The tech billionaire has taken drastic action including accessing highly confidential government payment systems in treasury and issuing orders for mass resignations, as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), all in a bid to rid the government of “corruption.”
In the address that aired live on Tuesday, President Donald Trump handed the floor over to Musk, who stood next to him in the Oval Office and spoke at great length about his mission to “weed out the corruption,” including removing judges who oppose the administration.
“To fact check it a little bit,” said Wallace, who broke in at about the three minute mark, “the co-president speaking much longer and in far greater detail than the president [raises] the serious question, who’s in charge?”
Watch the “Deadline: White House” segment below:
Panelist Maya Wiley, who is President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, responded, “Well, let’s say it ain’t ‘we the people.’ I think what they’ve just forgotten in that long litany of misinformation and disinformation, which is just my real nice way of saying lies — there was a whole bunch of lying in there.”
Wiley added that the federal judge who blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department records was protecting the rights of ordinary people, contrary to Trump and Musk’s arguments.
“Every last one of us that has social security numbers in that data,” Wiley said. “When Elon Musk had his employees go in and seize data, that’s our data. […] So this question about elections, you already pointed out the big irony.”
Wiley stated that the courts are there, as intended in the Constitution, “to protect us against the kind of overreach and lawlessness we have been watching unfold for the past three weeks.”
She continued, “For Elon Musk to call for the impeachment which he has of this judge who was following the law is really to say, ‘Unless you do our bidding, we will suggest we should come for your job, even though you are supposed to be independent from us.’”
At nearly the six minute mark, Wiley asks, “Is he still talking?” to which Wallace replied that he was.
Glenn Thrush, a New York Times justice reporter, agreed that it was unusual for Trump to sit and watch someone else talk for so long. “The look you’re seeing right there is Trump looking at the kid mowing the lawn,” he said, referring to a viral photo from 2017.
Watch the MSNBC segment in the video above.
