Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) was put on the spot by MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Thursday over the role that X owner Elon Musk is playing in negotiating a deal to keep the federal government open.
In particular, Mitchell asked Lawler what he made of the fact that Musk led the way to killing the bipartisan government funding bill despite the fact that no one elected him to any position of government authority.
"At this late stage, it was Elon Musk that jumped into this," said Mitchell. "I mean, nobody asked what he thought about it, but he offered more than 100 posts on X, what used to be called Twitter, and only then did the president-elect weigh in. It's not clear who's leading the charge here: Who's in charge, Elon Musk or Donald Trump?"
Lawler said he believed that Trump was clearly in charge and then tried to deflect attention to President Joe Biden, who is still the president for the next month.
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Later in the interview, Lawler shot down the idea of ousting House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and replacing him with Musk, as some Republicans in both the House and Senate have recommended.
"I support the speaker," he said. "I'm not one calling for the speaker to be removed, I think that's idiotic. The fact is, you know, we cannot do anything until we elect a speaker, and so if people want to certify Donald Trump's election on January 6th, you need a speaker to do that, and if we have a fight over a speaker on January 3rd, that is going to cause absolute chaos. So that is not going to help matters here."
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