A cringe-worthy video clip of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Maxine Waters attempting to fire up a rally failed to get most people in attendance to join in an anti-Elon Musk chant.
The event reportedly took place shortly after the Trump administration shuttered the USAID offices in Washington, D.C., after announcing a pause in all foreign aid directed through the organization while also placing it under the State Department for the first time in its history.
According to a chyron on C-SPAN, the rally was also in protest of reports that Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency staff had gained access to information regarding Treasury Department payment systems.
Musk and DOGE were given access to a Treasury agency called the “Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which disburses trillions in payments each year, including Social Security checks and federal salaries, through DOGE, which is tasked with reducing federal spending,” Fox News reported.
“We cannot allow Elon Musk and a small group of people to secretly, behind closed doors, take away our privacy, take away our dollars, take away everything we have,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, railed during the rally, according to a video clip posted to — ironically — Musk’s X platform.
“We are gonna fight this fight! I am gonna stand with you in this fight!” Schumer continued, raising his arms in the air and beginning a chant: “We will win!”
After repeating that a number of times, Schumer paused, perhaps taking stock of the lack of enthusiasm, and changed his chant to: “We won’t win!”
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The clip drew a litany of responses, most of them critical and mocking.
“This doofus will be ousted from his corrupt party,” one X user wrote.
“If you turn the sound off, he’s doing the Trump victory dance,” another posted.
“Kinda sad. It’s like watching a corpse uprising,” said another.
“They can’t do anything right. Not even that,” another user wrote.
Musk criticized alleged “fraudulent” Treasury payments on Saturday, as reports emerged that DOGE had gained access to the federal government’s payment system. Fox added that the report comes as the second Trump administration pushes forward with efforts to reduce what it describes as government waste and overspending.
“The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once,” Musk, the chair of DOGE, posted early Saturday morning to X.
Musk’s post was made just before the New York Times reported on Saturday afternoon that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had granted DOGE personnel access to the payment system. The Treasury oversees approximately $6 trillion in annual payments for federal agencies.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, shared on social media Saturday that he had also been informed that DOGE was granted access to the payment system.
“Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE *full* access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it,” Wyden posted to the left-wing social media site BlueSky on Saturday evening.
Reports emerged on Friday that civil servants at the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s HR department, had been locked out of the office’s computer systems by DOGE, Fox noted further.
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