Rand Paul floats Elon Musk for Speaker of the House

(The Hill) - Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested Elon Musk serve as Speaker in a Thursday morning post on X following contentious debates over the continuing resolution (CR).

“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress . . . ,” Paul wrote.

“Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it .  . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”

Later Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she would be open to supporting Musk to replace Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a post quoting Paul.

"I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House. DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency," Greene wrote on X.

"The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way," she added.

Musk is the co-leader of President-elect Trump's "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE), an advisory panel focused on cutting spending and the size of the federal government.

He and fellow DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy helped drive a wave of opposition to a bipartisan spending deal Wednesday, ultimately ending in Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance urging Republicans to oppose the measure.

Several Democrats criticized Musk and claimed he, not Trump, was driving the president-elect's position.

“It’s one thing when you have Donald Trump governing by tweet, as he did in his first term, where he was in communication with Congress, but now you have Elon Musk, an unelected oligarch, governing by tweet,” Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman (N.Y.) said Wednesday on CNN’s “AC360.”

“This is absurd,” he added.

The Speaker is not required to be an elected member of the House, and elected officials have flirted with the idea of appointing a Congressional outsider in the past.

In 2015, former Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell to hold the leadership role unsuccessfully.