We know Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is Temu Obama. The man is one of the faces of the Democratic Party and leader of the House Democrats, and he’s atrocious. The inability to answer questions is astounding. He cannot go off-script—it’s the talking points or bust. We’ve seen this time and again. It’s also an issue with former members of his staff. Michael Hardaway, Jeffries’ former spokesperson and communications director, went on MSNBC yesterday to trash the Department of Government Efficiency yesterday, claiming it cost taxpayers $135 billion. When pressed on how his math adds up, he couldn’t answer the question (via Grabien):
Rep. Jeffries’ @michaelhardaway tells MSNBC that DOGE has actually cost taxpayers $135 billion — but when asked how, he comes up dry pic.twitter.com/iyD2kaSRKj
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 28, 2025
Well, first of all, many of the projects that they’ve laid out, that they allegedly claim that they saved this money for, didn’t actually save us money. They are already closing or they were already ending. That’s the first thing. They set up all these offices and sort of done all these random things that are incredibly costly and have done nothing to drive down the bottom line. Now, you could have just cured child hunger for that amount of money. You could have built 500,000 affordable housing units for that amount of money. But instead, we’re wasting this with Elon Musk and his random projects."
DOGE “sort of done all these random things that are incredibly costly” is not an answer. There is no answer because DOGE did find wasteful spending, most of which were fat pork projects that enriched the elites. It also wasn’t a hard question and a predictable follow-up. Even trash networks like MSNBC know that’s a ‘must’ on a list when someone says something in DC costs or saves money.
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What is problematic about this issue is that congressional Republicans refused to codify the work DOGE has done. It seems enough Republicans feared the AstroTurf operations at these town halls.
Elon Musk announced that his last day with the Trump crew was coming on Wednesday. He’s transitioning back to running his companies. OMB Director Russell Vought is slated to take over DOGE’s duties.
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