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Just when you thought Elon Musk’s political reach wouldn’t stretch further, the billionaire has recruited seven young techies for DOGE, but not without swift rebuke from Stephen King.
For context, Musk tapped seven tech industry workers aged between 19 to 25 years old to join the Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting government arm he co-leads with Vivek Ramaswamy. Despite having little to no experience working in politics, the young group has been tasked with helping DOGE’s goal of cutting trillions from the federal government.
Yep, seven tech nerds are using their Dorito-stained fingers to control trillions of dollars, but their influence reportedly extends beyond DOGE. According to WIRED, one of these workers, 25-year-old Marko Elez, was granted access to the systems of the Treasury Department responsible for dispersing almost all payments made by the federal government. If it sounds like Musk is trying seize control of the entire government, well…if the shoe fits, I guess?
Thankfully, we have voices like King to call out all these shady Musk maneuvers. The author, whose long-running takedowns of Trump should be hung in the Louvre, took to Blue Sky to voice his concerns. “Get them out of government,” he wrote alongside an image of the seven new DOGE workers, while reminding us that most of them are “not old enough to be elected to anything.”
King also said he suspects the group — which names Elez alongside Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger and Ethan Shaotran — are “part of Musk’s gaming posse.” Musk delivered the comments in response to a Blue Sky post which compared Musk’s hiring of the techies to the “2016 Cambridge Analytics” scandal, which similarly worked in Trump’s favor.
The same post also describes the DOGE hires as “boy hackers,” again reiterating how they shouldn’t be anywhere near the highly sensitive and critical services of high office. King wasn’t the only one to criticize the unexpected hires, with Chuck Schumer declaring that “an unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”
For her part, Elizabeth Warren said the government is being handed over “to an unelected billionaire and an unknown number of his unqualified flunkies.” In any case, it’s simply the latest maneuver that has seen Musk — who, it’s worth reiterating, was not elected — overstep his political power. Earlier this week, Trump granted the billionaire the elevated status of ‘special government employee,’ which not only sounds like something Melania should take note of, but allows Musk to avoid the disclosure rules about conflicts of interest and finances that apply to regular government employees.
In addition to his attack on the Treasury, Musk also has it out for USAID, and is working to dismantle it. It was only last month that Musk delivered a Nazi salute, and now he’s a special government employee whose recruiting groups of flunkies for God knows what. With all that, I’m convinced that, years from now, Ryan Murphy or HBO will order a miniseries dramatizing the first few weeks of Trump’s second term. Only, unlike that projection, we can’t turn this one off.