Stephen Colbert has zero respect for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Neither, he argued, do many Americans.
“Turns out, randomly firing a lot of Americans isn’t that popular,” Colbert explained in his monologue Thursday. “One new poll found that 58 percent opposed laying off large numbers of government workers. And a different poll of 18- to 34-year-olds found that 71 percent disapprove of DOGE.”
Colbert joked, “Yes, millions of young people cannot stand Elon Musk, and those are just his kids.”
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Colbert’s joke comes less than a week after the announcement of Musk’s latest child. The billionaire has now fathered 14 children with four different women.
Colbert also detailed the latest controversial decisions Musk and his DOGE employees have made.
“In only 45 days, they fired 30,000 federal employees, so randomly that now they’re trying to hire a bunch of them back. For instance, a month ago they fired about 1,300 people down at the Centers for Disease Control,” Colbert explained.
“Then yesterday, that agency sent out an email telling about 180 of those employees to come back to work,” Colbert said. “With a subject line, ‘Read this email immediately.’”
“That’s a strategy known as your mom texting you at 7 a.m., ‘Please call me, dot, dot, dot, prayer hands emoji,’” Colbert joked.
Colbert noted that the CDC email to recently fired employees also read, “We apologize for any disruption this may have caused.”
Colbert replied, “No, disruption is when your cable goes out during a storm. This is your cable guy burning your house to the ground between the hours of noon and 6 p.m. on Thursday.”
Colbert also ripped Musk and Trump for their decision to fire thousands of veteran employees from Veterans Affairs.
“Under Biden, the V.A. experienced its highest ever service levels, and veteran trust in the V.A. was at an all-time high,” Colbert pointed out. “But you know the DOGE motto: ‘If it ain’t broke, let me try.‘”
