Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld and Democratic Party strategist Jessica Tarlov clashed Monday on “The Five” over the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk’s role in cutting wasteful government spending.
Criticism against DOGE and Musk ramped up in February after the announcement of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) being upended, sparking backlash from Democrats over the Trump administration’s use of DOGE to downsize government agencies. After clips aired of former President Barack Obama advocating for government cuts, Gutfeld pressed Tarlov on the issue, prompting her to insist that Democrats don’t “like waste, fraud, and abuse either.”
“Just go through Congress. Work together to do that. You have Democrats on the first day they announced DOGE said, ‘Sign me up. I’m happy to do this.’ It is widely popular as an idea. In execution, though, it’s a massive bomb,” Tarlov said.
“That’s what you said,” Gutfeld said. “Everything you agree with, except [you say] ‘You’re not doing it the right way.’”
Various agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, and USAID, have made staff cuts since February. However, confusion erupted within the Trump administration after DOGE sent an email to federal employees on Feb. 22, requiring them to submit five bullet points detailing their accomplishments from the previous week.
Trump later said in a March 6 cabinet meeting that while Musk lacks the authority to make cuts to agencies or departments, DOGE can issue recommendations.
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Tarlov went on to call out DOGE’s cuts to Johns Hopkins and the “scientific innovation, medical innovation” coming from the institution, to which Gutfeld teased about COVID-19. The two went on to argue how COVID-19 “came from a lab,” before Tarlov said that she would “say all the talking points that you want.”
“You’re doing one right now,” Gutfeld said. “You’re doing the, ‘I found this one example. There’s one example that says it’s bad.’”
Tarlov continued to say that there was more than one example besides the cut to Johns Hopkins, adding “there’s thousands of employees being fired.”
“What are the cuts? What are they cutting?” Gutfeld asked. “It’s administrative. It’s redundant. It has to do with technology.”
“The veterans that are getting fired. Social Security payments. They’re marking people as dead who are not dead,” Tarlov said. “How do you feel about that?”
Reports have indicated that the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) plans to cut 80,000 jobs from its staff and return staffing levels to its 2019 era of 400,000 employees. While Democrats have criticized the cuts to the agency, VA Secretary Doug Collins called out the party on Thursday for its fearmongering.
“The thing is, you will agree with this and then you will go, ‘But I don’t like the way it’s being done,’” Gutfeld said. “Well, then, how do you do it?”
“No, because he’s not actually doing it. You do it like they did in the ’90s. You don’t do it like this,” Tarlov said. “Elon Musk is getting more and more government contracts. He’s not having to look under the hood of what he’s doing. His companies aren’t up for examination, but he’s going around doing this.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”The Five”)
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