Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has thrown her weight behind Senator Rand Paul’s ridiculous proposal that Elon Musk be elected the speaker of the House of Representatives.
“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul posted Thursday morning on X. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk … think about it … nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”
Quote-tweeting Paul’s proposal approvingly, Greene wrote that she would be “open to supporting” Musk for the speakership.
“DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning [sic] in Congress to enact real government efficiency,” Greene wrote, referring to the austerity agenda of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory panel to be co-led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”
On Thursday afternoon, according to Daily Mail reporter Jon Michael Raasch, Greene emailed her constituents a survey asking if they would support Musk as House speaker. “DOGE could become the legislative branch,” the accompanying message says. The congresswoman posed the same question in a poll on Musk’s platform, X, which has garnered over 57,000 votes by the time of writing—82.7 percent of which are in favor of him getting the gavel.
If Paul and Greene were to have it their way, Musk would be the first nonmember to hold the speakership.
Musk has been crusading against Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s bipartisan spending bill to avert a government shutdown. On Wednesday, the billionaire sent over 100 tweets on X railing against the bill—with “a number of misleading or outright false claims,” per Politico—and expressing indifference about the prospect of a shutdown.
Musk’s efforts culminated in President-elect Trump coming out against the bill, dealing “a likely deathblow” to budget negotiations, per the Associated Press. As Trump and Musk send the government hurtling toward a shutdown, many observers have criticized elected officials for taking marching orders from an unelected billionaire.
Amid this wrangling, the right-wing populist House Freedom Caucus, of which Greene is a member, expressed its dissatisfaction with the proposed bill, touting instead Representative Chip Roy’s proposed DOGE Act, which would slash federal spending—though not, of course, the Pentagon budget.
There’s scarcely a better illustration of Greene’s phony brand of populism than her support for installing the world’s richest man to, as she put it, reign in the people’s elected body.
This story has been updated.