Sen. Mike Lee pushes Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy for Speaker of the House

Sen. Mike Lee said Thursday that the House of Representatives should make either Elon Musk or Vivek Ramaswamy the Speaker of the House in the next Congress.

During a discussion with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson about the effort to pass a funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, Lee said current speaker Mike Johnson is not up to the job, should be replaced.

"It seems to me that new leadership in the House is almost inevitable. If that's the case, I think we need to go outside the box. I think we need to look to a different place," Lee said.

Musk and Ramaswamy were tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency," or "DOGE," which will advise the Trump administration on "large scale structural reform" of the federal government. DOGE is a nod to Musk's favored form of cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.

Lee said the "DOGE movement" is wildly popular with Republican members of Congress, so it makes sense to elect Musk or Ramaswamy as Speaker.

"The DOGE movement is enormously popular in the House. Just listen to the members who are Republicans. They can't get enough of them. They praise DOGE. DOGE is going to save this. If that's the case, given that they all have expressed such affection for Vivek and for Elon, let them choose one of them. That would revolutionize everything," Lee said.

Lee also posted a picture of Ramaswamy and Musk on his @BasedMikeLee X/Twitter account on Thursday, hyping the idea of naming one of them as Speaker.

Coincidentally, it was Johnson who helped to convince Lee to launch his personal social media channel two years ago.

There has never been a Speaker of the House of Representatives who was not also a member of Congress.

Picking Musk to be the Speaker could present a thorny constitutional conundrum, since the position in third in line for the presidency. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution says requires that the president be "a natural-born Citizen" of the United States, which Musk is not.

Some have interpreted that clause to only apply to individuals born on U.S. soil, while others read it more broadly to include people born abroad to at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen. Neither applies to Musk.

During the interview, Lee trashed the process congressional leaders were using to pass a funding bill by Friday night to avoid a government shutdown.

"Here's what they do. Every single year, it's like clockwork. They orchestrate the spending deadlines. The first spending deadline hits September 30th. They pump that to about Thanksgiving. Then they pump that one to, December 20th. What an original idea," Lee said.

"Then they wait till, I don't know, December 18th to unfurl a spending bill, which they've been promising for months. So you'll get it. We're negotiating the best deal we can. They unfurl it hours before they expect us to vote on it."

On Wednesday, Trump and Musk blew up a bi-partisan spending deal after Musk flooded social media with misinformation about what was in the 1,500-page bill and demanded that congressional Republicans refuse to pass any legislation until Trump is sworn in.

On Thursday, House Republicans unveiled a stripped-down 116-page spending proposal that would fund the government for three months and suspend the debt limit for two years. It also includes $110 billion in disaster aid.

Johnson previously was part of Tenet Media, which the Justice Department alleged was part of a Russian-funded influence operation during the 2024 election. An indictment unsealed in September revealed that two employees of the Russian state-controlled media outlet RT allegedly funneled $10 million into Tenet to create content that was favorable to Donald Trump. Johnson has claimed that he was a victim in the scheme.