They Musk be joking.
Some Republicans are daydreaming over the prospect of billionaire guru and occasional literal flamethrower Elon Musk clinching the speaker’s gavel in the wake of a revolt against House GOP leadership over government funding.
“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) underscored on X, becoming the first Republican to publicly muse over the idea in recent days.
“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 Constitution does not mandate that the speaker be a sitting member of Congress, but there has never been a non-representative serving in that leadership role before.
Musk, 53, the world’s richest man, helped foment uproar among conservatives against the bipartisan government funding bill that congressional leadership rolled out late Tuesday to avert a government shutdown from midnight Friday into Saturday.
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance subsequently urged Republicans to slap down the bill and nudged GOP leadership to recalibrate, rendering the measure effectively dead on arrival in a blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), 52.
Thus far, only a handful of lawmakers dangled the prospect of Musk taking the reins in the lower chamber and the concept does not appear to have strong traction within the House Republican conference for now.
“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,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted on X.
Other GOP lawmakers are privately enraged by Musk’s intervention in the government funding tempest.
Last month, Trump, 78, announced Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as co-heads of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is not an actual government department.
Greene, 50, is helming the DOGE Caucus in the House of Representatives.
Musk and Ramaswamy, 39, swung through Congress earlier this month to brainstorm ideas with GOP lawmakers on ways to root out government waste.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) speculated that the “writing is on the wall” and that new leadership in the House is “inevitable” and “would revolutionize everything.”