Elon Musk posted to Senator Kelly after his recent visit to Ukraine:
"You are a traitor"
"Traitor?" wrote back. "Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do."
Kelly went on to comment on Musk's chainsaw approach to cutting waste:
I had veterans in my office last week who, after really good performance reports, found out that Elon Musk fired them for poor performance," said Kelly. "He has ruined these people’s lives. They were serving our country again in very valuable roles, and they did not deserve to get fired by an email from an unelected billionaire."
"So I think Elon needs to go back to making rockets. You know that's what he should focus on. He shouldn't be focused on this slash and burn of the federal government," he added. "And by the way, he's doing it for one reason. He's doing this so they create a little space so the big giant tax cuts that they're going to give for millionaires and billionaires do not look as bad, does not add as much to the debt and deficit," Kelly explained. "And the ways he's going to do it is he's firing people and then on top of that he's going to cut healthcare for kids, kids that — a third of people that get their healthcare from Medicaid are children and he's going to cut healthcare for seniors — all to give this big tax cut so I would prefer if Elon went back to his old job at SpaceX and Tesla," concluded Kelly.
on March 12, 2025, 7:34 pm