President Donald Trump called House Democrats “lunatics” at a Mar-a-Lago dinner attended by top GOP Senate leaders on Friday.
The president made the remark in reference to Friday morning reports that more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers had attempted to enter the Department of Education’s building. The representatives, including Reps. Mark Takano, Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Waters, and Greg Casar, went to request a meeting with acting education secretary Denise Carter, but were stopped by security.
“We are here to ask her, will you comply with an illegal executive order to shut down the Department of Education?” Takano of California said in one viral clip. “Although the president is determined to shut Congress out of the process, he will not.”
At the Senate dinner, Trump rebuked the Democrats and accused them of trying to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) “super geniuses” from checking “the books.”
“The Democrats have lost their minds, and they’ve lost their confidence,” said Trump. “They look foolish. Today, they tried to break into the Department of Education just because we want to go in and check the books.”
He added, “Maxine Waters is a lunatic. They’re all lunatics, frankly.”
Trump’s vow to dismantle the Department of Education has been met with fierce pushback over how such an action could impact education equality. In a statement to the press, Trump revealed that he had even told his education secretary nominee Linda McMahon that she should put herself “out of a job.”
Officially eliminating the department would require approval from Congress, but until then Musk’s DOGE has been tasked to probe the department for inefficiencies.
NBC News reported Saturday that two of Musk’s 22-year-old lieutenants now have administrator-level emails in the department, with Trump praising Musk’s team on Friday as “25 super geniuses” with “182 IQ.”
In a Friday recorded clip outside the Department of Education building, Rep Maxwell Frost rebuked the DOGE team as “goons.”
“This is what they’re doing. Elon is allowed in but not you, not your elected representatives, not parents, not students,” Frost posted on X. “Elon can go in, his goons can go in, but not the representatives of the people.”
In response to the video, Musk wrote, “What is this ‘Department of Education’ you keep talking about? I just checked and it doesn’t exist.”
