You might remember Tim Walz. Ran for vice president. Round-faced, non-threatening, affable — the embodiment of “Minnesota Nice.”
Walz, who remains governor of Minnesota, is also good for the occasional putdown. He put the Trump campaign back on its heels in late July when he said of the Republican ticket, “These guys are just weird.”
Walz struck again Monday in a post on Threads, owned by the competition of the target of his scorn: “Elon Musk is a terrible president.”
Democrats loved it; Republicans, less so.
“Elon Musk is running this country to the ground. I wish we had elected people like you in charge of this country,” wrote one fan on Threads.
“You’re irrelevant, why are you still here?” wrote another commenter, echoing a popular refrain.
Musk’s ascendance is a sore spot for President Donald Trump, not one to share the spotlight. He’s been supportive of Musk’s efforts so far but insists he’s still in charge.
“Sometimes we won’t agree with it, and we’ll not go where he wants to go,” Trump said. “But I think he’s doing a great job. He’s a smart guy.”
White House spokesman Steven Cheung fired back at the wannabe veep with a schoolyard taunt popular on the far right: “Tim Walz is a cuck.”
A “cuck,” short for cuckold, is defined as “a man whose wife is unfaithful” or a “weak or submissive man.”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary added it doubles as an “insulting and contemptuous term for a man who has politically progressive or moderate views.”
After Musk spent $290 million helping Trump’s re-election bid, the president appointed the Tesla founder head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a congressionally enacted agency. He frequently appears by the president’s side, leading many to label him a “shadow president,” if not the real POTUS.
The world’s richest man has raised serious concerns about his approach to the job of slashing wasteful spending. This past week alone, he accessed sensitive Treasury Department systems containing Americans’ most personal data and announced that the U.S. Agency for International Development — the agency tasked with distributing American foreign aid to war-torn places such as Gaza, Ukraine and sub-Saharan Africa — was being shut down.
His cuts have hit the poor the hardest; on Monday he announced the dismissals of Internal Revenue Service staffers who oversaw the system that allows Americans to file their taxes for free online. However, the portal was still active as of Wednesday morning.
Musk and his associates have threatened career civil servants who’ve spoken out against the power grab and dismissed rival politicos as the sore losers out to protect a corrupt and bloated bureaucracy.
While he may not be president, he’s leveraging his government appointment to wield power unprecedented for an unelected private citizen.
“Elon Musk, you didn’t create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people,” said Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin. “And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn’t have the power to destroy it.”
