Elon Musk waves chainsaw at CPAC to showcase budget slashing

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Feb 21, 2025

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Elon Musk wore sunglasses at night and waved a red chainsaw to show off his supposed budget-slashing prowess during a speech to the right-wing Conservative Political Action Committee.

The billionaire buddy of President Donald Trump got a rock star’s welcome from the Thursday night crowd of MAGA loyalists and he delivered a speech full of red meat attacks on Democrats, immigrants and supposed government waste.

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk said, after Argentina’s far right-wing President Javier Milei brought him the lumber-cutting power tool on stage.

“Waste is pretty much everywhere,” added Musk, who wore his trademark black MAGA cap and shades.

Musk has grabbed center stage in the first weeks of the second Trump administration by using his high-profile gig with the newly designated Department of Government Efficiency to cut thousands of federal jobs and scrap whole agencies.

Polls say he may be going too far too fast, with the majority of voters saying he has too much power and Trump should rein him in.

Musk has come under especially heavy criticism from lawmakers in both parties for his deep cuts to the 9/11 Health Fund, which provides benefits to 130,000 Ground Zero first responders and survivors of the worst-ever terror attack on American soil.

But the Tesla and SpaceX mogul showed no signs of regret as he lashed out a familiar list of MAGA enemies, namely liberals, immigrants and even Trump’s new punching bag, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“My mind is a storm,” admitted Musk, who boasts of his frenetic work pace.

Musk slammed former President Joe Biden for what he called lax immigration policies, specifically blasting an app that asylum-seekers used to get court appointments, allowing some of them to obtain work permits in the meantime.

He accused Democrats of doing that as an “investment” to get more support in swing states, even though none of the asylum seekers could vote.

“A lot of people don’t quite appreciate that this was an actual real scam at scale to tilt the scales of democracy in America,” Musk said “(It’s) treason.”

Musk defended his roughshod attacks on government agencies and said he was looking forward to taking his budget axe to the Federal Reserve, which operates independently from the White House.

“Yeah, sure, while we’re at it,” Musk quipped with a grin.

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