Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Ca.) made a dick joke about Elon Musk during a House hearing on the Department of Government Efficiency, on Wednesday — and later had to defend the insult to a CNN anchor who wondered if it was “effective messaging.”
During the House Oversight subcommittee hearing on DOGE, Garcia tried to troll Musk while also taking a dig at the subcommittee’s chair, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Since Greene once showed Hunter Biden’s “dick pics” at a July 2023 House Oversight Committee hearing, Garcia decided to follow that precedent.
“I find it ironic, of course, that our chairwoman, Congresswoman Greene, is in charge of running this committee. Now, in the last Congress, Chairwoman Greene literally showed a dick pic in our oversight congressional hearing, so I thought I’d bring one as well,” Garcia said, before setting up his bit.
Garcia then showed a photo of Musk in a tuxedo, and some of the people in attendance laughed at the joke.
“Now this, of course, we know, is President Elon Musk,” he said. “He’s also the world’s richest man. He was the biggest political donor in the last election. He has billions of dollars in conflicts of interest, and we know that he’s leading a power grab also abided by and encouraged by Donald Trump, and, of course, the chairwoman, Congresswoman Greene.”
Garcia then noted the many ways Musk and DOGE could hurt American citizens.
Garcia later appeared on CNN, where anchor Brianna Keilar chided him for ― heaven forbid ― making a slightly off-color play on words during a congressional hearing.
“Do you think that calling Elon Musk a ‘dick’ is effective messaging for confronting what is a potentially an irreversible transformation of the U.S. government?”
Garcia did not mince words or apologize for the “dick pic” ― which, we must emphasize, showed the mogul clothed in a suit and did not show any genitalia.
“Well, he is a dick,” Garcia explained to Keilar, and said he thinks Musk is also “harming the American public in an enormous way.”
Garcia said he thinks the American public wants to see Democratic politicians like himself “bring actual weapons to this bar fight.”
He added:
“This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country. And it’s important to push back on the chairperson of this committee. Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about having decorum, about bipartisanship. This is the person that lies more than anybody else in the entire Congress. And so, if she is going to make a mockery of hearings, I want to make sure that us as Democrats are bringing that same level of energy.”
Garcia then explained that after he made his joke “we went into exactly what Elon Musk is trying to do dismantling the Department of Labor, dismantling the Department of Education, dismantling all of our consumer protection agencies.”
He then addressed Keilar’s point about “effective messaging” by noting that it’s “important to get the attention of the American public and call Elon Musk out for what he is, and to make people know that Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a serious legislator, and she shouldn’t be treated as such.”
Go Ad-Free — And Protect The Free Press
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Keilar seemed to suggest that Garcia made his point when she reposted the exchange on social media.