Turley: Musk Is the Badger in the Bureaucracy—D.C. Is in Panic Over DOGE Shakeup

Jonathan Turley on Elon's work with DOGE: The terror alert in Washington is quite astonishing.

“You have people all over the Beltway breathing in paper bags right now because of the idea that they could bring in these people, and that they're going to think outside the box. That's what Musk is known for.

He's known as someone who rejects path dependence. He did that with Twitter. You know, they said he couldn't fire all those people at Twitter. Twitter became more efficient, and the operations continued unimpeded. That was against all the predictions that Twitter would literally shut down because it needed every one of those or most of those employees.

So, Musk is coming in here, and yeah, the terror alert in Washington is quite astonishing.

But this idea that this is a danger to democracy is rather odd. You have a president who just ran on a pledge to shrink the government, to look for waste. He brought in someone from the outside for a reason, because past pledges by presidents have gone nowhere in terms of changing the way Washington functions.

So, he brought in this guy who operates with a different approach. The truth is, they want people to leave some of these positions.

The fact is that if you throw a badger into a crowded car, people are going to get out. And Musk is that badger. [Trump] threw him in that car, and they're trying to change the way government is composed and is running.”

Fox News, February 6, 2025