In an lengthy interview with Elon Musk that aired Tuesday on the Fox News Channel with Sean Hannity (and taped late last week), President Trump unsurprisingly found time to lambaste the “bad,” “dangerous,” “horrible” liberal media as he and Musk have stood up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to shrink and tame the leviathan that is the federal government.
Musk led into this by explaining Trump winning has presented “really the opportunity to fix the system” and “restore the power of democracy and people,” which shouldn’t be confused with “fixing the system.”
Citing the irony of the left’s attacks against DOGE employees as unelected tyrants when that’s what many powerful bureaucrats are themselves, Trump called them “a con job” and “so bad for the country, so dangerous and so bad and the media is so bad.”
Trump then launched head-on into the liberal press, starting with MSNBC: “When I watch MSNBC, which I don’t watch much, but you have to watch the enemy on occasion, the level of arrogance and — and cheating and — they’re just horrible people. These are horrible people. They’re liars.”
He correctly added they’ve suddenly started talking about the Constitution but, in reality, “[t]hey couldn’t care less about the Constitution.”
If one is going to talk about MSNBC, it wouldn’t be a surprise to know CNN wasn’t far behind. Trump astutely took notice of CNN’s arrogant tone:
CNN likewise — I mean, I watch them asking questions with, you know, the hatred with the — you know, I said, why are you asking the question with such anger? You’re asking me a normal question, but you see the bias. The bias is so incredible and those two are bad.
Not to be left out, he cited the Associated Press and government-funded PBS as also “bad” people while “CBS is terrible.”
Also unsurprisingly, Trump invoking CBS meant he had to bring up their 60 Minutes scandal with their Kamala Harris interviews
I mean, CBS now, they changed an answer in Kamala. They asked her some questions. She answered them like a, you know, low-I.Q. person, the opposite of him — the absolute opposite, but she gave a horrible answer. They took the entire answer out and they put another answer that she gave 20 minutes later into the — into — as the answer. I’ve never even heard of that. I thought I heard of it all.
After Hannity brought up “the outrageous amounts of money being spent abroad, like USAID,” Musk argued Trump will do the opposite with the new Air Force One’s budget being proof (click “expand”):
MUSK: Well, I guess, at a high level, I think it’s what the President mentioned earlier, which is that, in order to save taxpayer money, it comes down to two things, competence and caring.
TRUMP: That’s right.
MUSK: And when — when the President was shown the outrageous bill for the new Air Force One, and — and then negotiated it down, if he had — if the President had not applied competence and caring, the price would have been 50 percent higher, literally 50 percent higher. The President cared, the President was competent, the price was not 50 percent higher as a result and so, when you add more competence and caring, you get a better deal for the American people.
TRUMP: But we could take — we were talking about this yesterday, I could take — give me thousands of bills, any — I could pick any one of them.
MUSK: Yes, exactly.
TRUMP: And I could take all thousand and let’s say it’s a bill for $5,000, just $5,000, and it’s done by some bureaucrat and if he would say, I’ll give you three, I don’t want to pay you five, it’s too high, I’ll give you three, but they don’t do that. If a guy sends in a bill for 5,000, they pay 5,000. They expect to be cut. Everybody expects to be cut. When you send in a bill, you expect to be cut. They send in the bill higher for the most part. This is true with lawyers, legal fees. When they send in legal fees, you — I can cut — I wish I had the time. I would save so — but I could cut these bills in half, much better than half.
MUSK: Yeah.
TRUMP: But you offer people a much lower number because you know — they actually put fat. I’m not even saying, it’s like a way of business. They put more on because they expect to be negotiated. When you send in a bill to the government, there’s nobody to negotiate.
MUSK: Yes.
TRUMP: You send in a bill for $10,000 and they send you a check back for $10,000. If you would call them and say, we’ll give you 5,000. No, no, no, I need more than five, we’ll give you five. I’m not going to pay any more than five. Well, make it six. No, I’m not going to make it six and you’ll settle for $5,500. You’ve just cut the bill almost in half and it took like two minutes, but none of that stuff.
To see the relevant FNC transcript from February 18, click here.
