Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin is not about to let Elon Musk chip away at America’s freedom of the press without at least attempting to call out the authoritarian moves at play.
Armed with a blown-up copy of the Time magazine cover featuring the billionaire behind President Donald Trump’s desk, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee condemned Musk’s actions over the last three weeks on Wednesday.
“The wrecking ball of right-wing authoritarianism is swinging right through Congress and coming directly at the freedoms of the press and the people,” Raskin said on the House floor. “The self-appointed CEO of this operation is the unelected bureaucrat and aspiring techno-dictator, Elon Musk, who Steve Bannon calls a truly evil individual trying to create a techno-state in which he’s king and most of us are reduced to the status of serfs.”
“‘Break things and break things fast,’ Steve Bannon says, is Musk’s M.O,” he continued. “De facto President Musk and his nocturnal DOGE muscovite youth brigade have now taken control of dozens of federal computer databases in order to dismantle entire federal agencies and programs that we in Congress created and funded with appropriations to keep our people safe and secure and healthy.”
The Congressman’s public plea comes a day after Musk held a joint press conference from the Oval Office alongside Trump on Tuesday. However, the AP was notably barred from covering the White House event due to their newsroom’s decision to refrain from referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” as Trump and Musk ordered.
On Monday, Raskin joined House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Reps. Rosa DeLauro and Gerry Connolly in co-chairing a task force to combat the Trump Administration’s DOGE campaign.
“Of course, Musk could not be elected president constitutionally, so Trump just sold him the office for $280 million,” Raskin wrote on X last week alongside an image of the aforementioned Time cover.
