Elon Musk Sets His Sight on Demolishing Yet Another Key Agency
The richest man on earth wants to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Elon Musk wrote on X in response to an error-riddled clip of Trump megadonor Marc Andreessen talking about how much he hates pro-consumer regulation on the Joe Rogan show. In the video, Andreessen tells a shocked Rogan that the CFPB is debanking people and companies for “having the wrong politics.”
In reality, the CFPB has put forth measured, bipartisan policy that protects from that very situation.
Director Rohit Chopra recently stated his clear opposition to politically motivated debanking of conservatives and Christians.
“The CFPB put out a legitimately good rule that went after banks over debanking users based on political views,” reporter Ryan Grim noted. “Now VCs and Musk who don’t like the CFPB for other reasons are straight up lying to whip people into a frenzy and defang the CFPB. The message: they think you are stupid and can’t read and are going to make your life worse in order to enrich themselves.”
Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, will head the Department of Government Efficiency, and is dead set on wiping away large swaths of vital regulation, mostly to benefit people like himself. The CFPB seems to be the latest thing on this chopping block.
“You put a billionaire in charge, and shockingly he finds that an agency which fights for consumers against bank fraud is one of the first government functions that needs to go,” wrote Bernie Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir.
In a disturbing post on X, a Trump-endorsed candidate for the House of Representatives targeted and invoked an anti-Muslim trope against two Muslim members of Congress.
Florida state Senator Randy Fine, who is running to fill the vacancy in Florida’s 6th U.S. congressional district, singled out Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on Tuesday. Quote-tweeting an endorsement from the Republican Jewish Coalition, Fine posted, “The ‘Hebrew Hammer’ is coming. @RashidaTlaib and @IlhanMN might consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.”
Tlaib and Omar are two of just three Muslim members of Congress, and the only two Muslim women.
Fine has a history of using demeaning rhetoric against Muslims and Palestinians and trafficking in Islamophobic tropes. In the past, he has said that “we have a Muslim problem in America” and that “while many Muslims are not terrorists, they are the radicals, not the mainstream.”
In August 2021, when Fine was a representative in Florida’s state House, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint against him with the House Public Integrity and Ethics Committee, alleging that Fine “violated his duty as an elected official” by “encouraging his constituents to run over people at Palestinian advocacy protests,” “call[ing] for the annihilation of the Palestinian people,” and direct-messaging a Floridian to “blow yourself up,” among other instances of “egregious conduct.”
In September, Fine took to X to cheer the death of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist reportedly killed by the Israeli forces while peacefully protesting illegal settlements in the West Bank. “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerror ist. #FireAway,” Fine wrote.
Donald Trump threw his support behind Fine’s candidacy last week, referring to him as an “America First Patriot” in a Truth Social post.
Senior advisers to Kamala Harris’s campaign joined the liberal podcast Pod Save America this week to offer their takes on why their candidate suffered a crushing defeat this election—and seemed to have no real humility about where they went wrong.
Stephanie Cutter, one senior aide who sat down for the joint interview, said the vice president was correct in her refusal to set herself apart from President Biden during the presidential race. Cutter said that Harris “felt like she was part of the administration, so why should she look back and cherry-pick some things that she would have done differently, when she was part of it?”
Cutter added that the thinking within the campaign was that if Harris broke with Biden on a specific issue like immigration, stories would come out from administration staffers questioning why she didn’t take different stances in meetings or challenge specific policies to the president.
Eventually, Harris settled on a prevailing campaign strategy that vice presidents almost never break with their presidents, with the exception of Mike Pence with Donald Trump. Cutler and the podcast hosts, former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor, then laughed over a “murder” and “ripping up the Constitution” exception.
Harris Campaign Senior Advisor @StefCutter explains why Kamala Harris was unwilling to differentiate herself more from Joe Biden on........
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