Rahm Emanuel has called out his former Republican colleagues in Congress for being MIA while President Donald Trump and his “First Buddy” Elon Musk steamroll the federal government.
“There’s a number of Republican senators and members of Congress who I consider serious. I don’t agree with them, but I served in committees with them, etc. They have put their manhood in a lockbox,” the former Illinois congressman said during the latest episode of veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher’s podcast On.
Emanuel—who jokingly asked Swisher not to get mad at him for the gendered turn of phrase—said he knows some Republicans are going “against their consciences.” Privately they’ve told him they disagreed with some of the president’s actions, even when they’ve publicly refused to oppose Trump.
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When Swisher suggested they were worried about being primaried or attacked online, Emanuel—who also served chief of staff and ambassador to Japan under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden—wasn’t sympathetic.
“Well work your district, man. That’s what this process is about,” he said. “You ran for Congress. If it’s only about getting a good table at a restaurant, got it.”
Democrats should call Republicans’ bluff, he added, particularly when it comes to Musk’s nebulous cost-cutting task force DOGE. The “department” of government efficiency—an unofficial advisory group that is operating without congressional oversight—claims to have saved tax payers $55 billion. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News on Wednesday that DOGE would identify $1 trillion in “waste, fraud and abuse.”
DOGE’s math doesn’t add up, though. A set of “receipts” posted on the group’s website totals just a fraction of the alleged “savings.” One $8 million contract was counted as $8 billion, meaning it was inflated by $7.992 billion. Musk also hasn’t provided any evidence of fraud.
In the meantime, Trump has summarily fired more than a dozen inspectors general, who audit federal agencies for fraud, waste and abuse. In 2023, the IGs saved taxpayers more than $93 billion, according to their annual report to the president and Congress.
That’s 10 times the savings Musk claims to have discovered, Emanuel pointed out. If he were leading congressional Democrats, he would “put all $93 billion of the reports on the table” during budget negotiations and “make it very clear these will be amendments on the appropriations process.”
“It would put the Republicans against the wall,” he said. “More importantly, it would make sure Democrats are not defending an institution, but they’re [there] to find the waste, fraud and abuse. We cannot be the party of bureaucrats, the party of the status quo.”
Forcing the Republicans’ hand would also expose the “emperor wears no clothes,” he added.
The fact that Trump fired the IGs in the first place makes it clear that his administration isn’t really trying to root out waste, fraud, abuse or corruption, nor is Musk, whom Emanuel called a “shiny bobble” meant to distract people.
Democrats should focus less on Musk and more on what he’s getting access to, Emanuel said. With DOGE’s Gen Z engineers forcing their way into federal systems that contain private personal and financial data for millions for Americans, Musk is getting access to a “the greatest concentration of data anywhere,” which is the building block of artificial intelligence.
“People do not like the government or anybody—any agency, or any corporation, rummaging through your medical records, your financial records, or any other type of records that can then be used almost against you,” he said.
Privacy is a core concept for Americans, he added.
“This gets to a bigger subject, and now I’m closing my eyes in a moment of prayer,” he said. “It’s less about the rules and more about the results. That should be [the basis] of your criticism, your attack or your fight.”
