Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) made a doozy of a suggestion on Thursday for who the next speaker of the House should be.
Current Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is dealing with challenges from fellow Republicans over his government funding plan that was panned by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump picked to lead a nongovernmental advisory group called the Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk has also called for a government shutdown, which is why Paul caused quite a buzz on social media when he suggested having the manchild mogul replace Johnson as House speaker.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the Kentucky senator noted that the House speaker is not required to be a member of Congress, and basically suggested electing Musk because “nothing would disrupt the swamp more.”
He also seemed excited about the “joy” of “seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds.”
Musk hadn’t commented on Paul’s endorsement as of Thursday afternoon, but the idea did get some tacit support from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R).
She said she’d be open to supporting Musk as speaker because “the establishment needs to be shattered.”
Other people weren’t as enthusiastic about putting Musk, a businessman who wasn’t elected to office, in charge of the House.
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Candidly I think it is significant that one of the members of the Republican Party most closely aligned with Kremlin interests is the one floating secret Kremlin pal Elon Musk to become Speaker of the House and join the line of succession (though he would be ineligible to serve). This is ugly stuff.
— Seth Abramson (@sethabramson.bsky.social)2024-12-19T14:01:22.099Z
