Bill Clinton’s former chief strategist has laid into Elon Musk and his young DOGE goon squad during a spicy debate on CNN.
Paul Begala was jostling with Republican strategist Brad Todd on CNN’s The Source, with anchor Kaitlan Collins, Wednesday night. The pair butted heads over Musk and President Donald Trump’s style in gutting federal agencies. Whilst he agreed in principle that federal spending needed to be slashed, Begala urged Mr Trump to go “the constitutional route.”
Todd then suggested Democratic hypocrisy, pointing out that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other Democrats had turned a blind eye to the courts over Roe v Wade abortion rulings. That’s when things got tasty between the two men, with Begala blasting: “It’s just not true! Democrats gave up the White House when the Supreme Court ruled against them in Bush vs Gore.”
Anchor Kaitlan Collins then clawed the issues back into the modern day and the CNN contributor shifted his focus to America’s unelected “first buddy,” the Tesla and SpaceX chief, and his young minion with the cringe-worthy moniker.
He was speaking specifically about a Trump executive order that decrees that the Department for Government Efficiency can force federal agencies into firing four people for every new hire. “Who the hell voted for Mr. Musk?” Begala raged. “Who the hell voted for—excuse the phrase—a guy who calls himself Big Balls? A 19-year-old kid going in there and trying to fire cancer researchers and scientists and teachers and agricultural specialists. It’s, it’s appalling.”
According to The Washington Post, “Big Balls” is thought to refer to Edward Coristine, who now works as a “senior adviser” in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology. The role comes in addition to Coristine’s work at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Concerns about Coristine go beyond his banal nickname. A Bloomberg report revealed last Friday that the teen was once fired from an internship at Path Network after an internal probe found he leaked sensitive information to a competitor.
It comes after a federal worker claimed that his colleagues were having one-on-one meetings with Musk’s young team to justify their jobs. The man, who spoke at an event hosted by the Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam in Leesburg, Virginia, last week, said: “In the last week, we had Elon Musk in our building, and after he visited the building, called for a 50 percent cut of the entire agency.
“My colleagues are getting 15 minute one-on-one check-ins with 19, 20, and 21-year old-college graduates asking to justify their existence.”
