Elon Musk wields ‘chainsaw for bureaucracy’ at CPAC debut: ‘I am become meme’

Elon Musk’s debut Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference featured a chainsaw the billionaire held above his head signifying the cuts his Department of Government Efficiency is making in Washington.

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” Musk said to cheers before his wide-ranging CPAC interview that touched on DOGE, his turn to MAGA, cancel culture and immigration.

The chainsaw was handed to Musk by Argentine President Javier Milei, one of President Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters on the world stage.

At CPAC, Musk referenced a tweet he posted when his support for dogecoin, a cryptocurrency and the first memecoin that later become the inspiration for DOGE, boosted the coin’s value.

“I am become meme,” he said. “There’s living the dream and then there’s living the meme, which is pretty much what’s happening, you know?”

“I mean, DOGE started out as a meme -- think about it,” the billionaire said.

Donning a black hat with Gothic “Make America Great Again” script, Musk explained what led him to go from politically neutral -- perhaps even “leaning a little Democrat” -- to embracing MAGA.

“That whole cancel culture, they kind of stopped freedom of speech ... infringed upon people’s personal freedoms,” Musk said.

“We need to restore the fundamental elements of what made America great, which is freedom and opportunity,” he said.

The billionaire, who has been the most visible face of the Trump administration besides the president, taunted his critics who rallied across the country on President’s Day over his political involvement.

“I mean, when they’re chanting for my death, I suppose that’s a little ... and then like the song’s not even that good. Like, you call that a death chant? That’s nothing, please,” he said.

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Musk defended DOGE’s work, saying the group is finding hundreds of billions of dollars in government waste “that are funding things that are fundamentally anti-American.”

“A massive amount of your tax dollars is going to legacy media companies, directly from the government. It’s terrible,” Musk said. “All of this sort of federal money going to media companies is what helps explain why the legacy media all says the same thing at the same time. It’s, like, weird.”

The billionaire said it was odd that Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are protesting DOGE’s cuts or downplaying the significance of the amount of fraud detected by the group.

“They’re always saying, ‘threat to our democracy.’ If you just replace ‘democracy’ with ‘bureaucracy’ it makes a lot of sense,” he said. “It just shows that they really lack empathy for the average taxpayer who’s working hard, paying taxes and then they say, ‘oh, a million dollars doesn’t matter.' I think it matters a lot to these people. So, what are you talking about?”

Musk expressed optimism that Americans would get so-called DOGE dividends, or a portion of the identified waste, in the form of stimulus checks.

“It’s money taken from things that are destructive to the country and from organizations that hate you [and given] to you. The spoils of battle, you know,” he said, adding that he spoke to the president, who is “supportive” of DOGE dividends.

“It sounds like that’s something we’re gonna do,” he said. “So as we’re finding savings, that’s going to translate into reductions in tax.”

On immigration, Musk claimed the Biden administration’s immigration policy was intended to increase the amount of Democratic voters in the country.

“You don’t have to think this is a grand conspiracy. You just have to look at basic incentives,” he said. “If the probability that an illegal is gonna vote Democrat at some point ... eventually they’re going to become citizens. Then the incentive is to maximize the amount of illegals in the country.

“That is why the Biden administration was out pushing to get as many illegals as possible and spent every dollar possible to get as many, because every one of them is a customer,” he said. “Every one of them is a voter. The whole thing was a giant voter importation scam.”