Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul thinks the world’s richest man should lead the U.S. House of Representatives during next year’s Congress because—why the hell not?
In a Thursday post to X, Paul suggested that megabillionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk should be the Republicans’ next pick for the leadership role, which is currently held by Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson.
“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul posted on Thursday. “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).”
The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress . . . 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’…— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 19, 2024
Paul is correct about one thing at least: The speaker of the House does not need to be a member of Congress. The Constitution states only that “the House of Representatives shall chuse their speaker and other officers.” However, a nonmember has never been elected to the post.
While it’s unlikely that Paul’s MAGA fantasy will come true, that hasn’t stopped other Republicans from publicly endorsing this ludicrous idea.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene quoted Paul’s tweet and added that she, too, would be “open” to having Musk serve as House Speaker.
I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House. DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way. https://t.co/8YuL56e443— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 19, 2024
“DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency,” said Green, referring to the toothless advisory commission known as the Department of Government Efficiency, which billionaires Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are expected to head. “The establishment needs to be shattered … This could be the way.”
Then, during an interview on Thursday, Utah Sen. Mike Lee echoed the sentiment.
“I think we go outside the box,” Lee said on a right-wing podcast. “I propose Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy. The DOGE movement is extremely popular in the House.”
Lee added that electing one of the two billionaires to the role would “revolutionize everything.”
What’s gone unsaid in these statements, though, is that even without the speakership, Musk has undue influence over President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party as a whole. Musk recently helped tank a critical spending bill, calling it a “steal of your tax dollars.” And while Johnson tried to tamp down the DOGE dork’s anger, he may have to grovel some more before the unelected, unofficial, purely advisory leaders of DOGE for at least a few more weeks—if not months or years.
Johnson’s initial effort to appease Musk came too late, though. After the Tesla CEO whipped up outrage—mostly via X, Musk’s social media platform, which was formerly known as Twitter—toward the bill, Trump and incoming Vice President J.D. Vance issued a joint statement similarly slamming it.
Some Democrats have speculated that it wasn’t Trump who initially wanted to destroy the funding bill. Instead, Trump kowtowed to Musk’s demands.
“Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations,” said Rep. Daniel Goldman, a New York-based Democrat. “Only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden Donald Trump … comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”
Rep. Goldman: “It’s not Donald Trump asking for this. It’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this. pic.twitter.com/sZbucGtP3T— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 19, 2024
Musk has not yet commented on whether he’d be interested in becoming the chamber’s next leader, which the body will elect on Jan. 3. But if he were, he’d likely face competition from one of his texting buds: Johnson. The Louisiana Republican was elected speaker October 2023, after some far-right House members engineered the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
But now, with a government shutdown looming, some Republicans have pledged to not vote to reelect Johnson in 2025.
Given the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, Johnson cannot afford more than a few GOP defections, assuming all other members are present and voting. With Rep. Matt Gaetz no longer serving as a member of Congress, Republicans are set to have 219 seats—or 218, depending on how you count Republican Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana—at the start of the next Congress. This compares with Democrat’s 215 members.
What’s more, the weakness Johnson has so far shown in struggling to pass this essential legislation will draw only more naysayers to the murky waters he must navigate if he wants to maintain control of the gavel.
What might help Johnson is the fact that some House Republicans are privately annoyed at Musk for intervening in the budget process. (After all, he’s not a member of Congress and can’t actually vote on this thing.) Plus, of the three lawmakers who have endorsed Musk for the speakership, two are elected to the Senate, meaning they won’t get to vote on whom House Republicans elect. There’s also no consensus on a potential successor among the House Republican caucus.
Then there’s the Trump effect.
On Thursday, the president-elect expressed confidence that Johnson will “easily remain speaker” if he “acts decisively and tough” on the spending package. (But who really knows what that means?) Surely, it’s a feather in Johnson’s cap that he still—somewhat shockingly—has Trump’s stamp of approval.
Well, at least he does for now.
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