Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) questioned why Democrats are acting as if Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) panel is “legitimate” during a podcast appearance.
“Having watched Trump during his first term, when nothing was real, right, when everything was a feint or a fake — it was never infrastructure week, right? He was never serious, after Parkland, about doing gun control. Why do we, all of a sudden, decide to take this government efficiency task force seriously?” Murphy said on a Thursday episode of The New Republic’s “The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent.”
“Like, why are we acting as if this is legitimate?” he added.
Trump said last month that Musk and Ramaswamy would serve as the heads of DOGE, which aims to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and restructure federal agencies.
DOGE would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” and work alongside the White House Office of Management and Budget, the president-elect said.
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump added. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”
Murphy said on the podcast that DOGE is “not a department” and “it’s being run by two billionaires, people who have no idea how important basic government services like Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Benefits are to regular people.”
“But, there are a lot of Democrats, you know, openly saying, ‘I [want to] work with them. … I want to sit down with this group,’ giving the appearance that this is something other than either just a TV show or an effort by the billionaire class to privatize government to benefit themselves,” Murphy added.
The Hill has reached out to Ramaswamy, the Trump transition team and the social platform X, which Musk owns.
A number of Democrats have expressed an openness to working with DOGE, particularly if it considers reductions in defense spending.
