On ‘The View,’ Gov. Pritzker Roasts Elon Musk’s ‘Incompetence’ in Bungled Federal Firings

Amanda Bell February 28, 2025, 12:25 pm

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker was the special guest of the day on Friday’s (February 28) edition of The View — along with guest cohost Ariana DeBose — and he had some key words of warning to share about the current state of affairs in the U.S. government.

“It’s been 38 days since the president took over, and he has slowly, steadily — actually, relatively quickly, I guess I should say — but every day eroded your rights, and everything that he has done has been tearing down constitutional democracy, and that’s what happened in Nazi Germany. And I’m not suggesting that we’re heading all the way down that path, but I am suggesting … it should be a red alert,” he said to start the segment.

He then roasted Republican congressional representatives who have been saying privately that they think Donald Trump‘s actions are “wrong” but are “afraid in their own primaries”: “I don’t think anybody should be in public service if your primary concern is staying over and over and over again,” he said. “You ought to be willing to put it all on the line to do what’s right.”

After being asked to respond to Donald Trump calling Ukranian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” but refusing to say the same about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Pritzker agreed that some of these daily controversies are just red herrings.

“A lot of this, on his part, is distraction. He’s trying to get, ‘Look over here. Look over here. Don’t look at what I’m doing down the middle here,'” Pritzker said. “And what are they doing? They’re tearing down health care. Literally, 20 million Americans risk losing their health care just in the next few months. And it’s not like it’s just an idea. They just passed it in the House of Representatives as part of the budget, they’re going to take away Medicaid from millions and millions people.”

He also pointed out that many of the people who will be most impacted by this portion of the budget, if it also passes the Senate and is then signed by Trump, are his own voters: “Many of those people, indeed, about half of them, live in red counties in Republican areas. They are Republicans who … didn’t know when they voted for Donald Trump that they were going to lose their health care because of Donald Trump. Didn’t believe it,” he said. “Donald Trump on the campaign trail, and even now, says, ‘Oh, I’m not going to take away Medicaid.’ He says, ‘Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, I’m not taking those away.’ Meanwhile, he blessed the House plan that just passed that takes away Medicaid. So that’s the thing I think most people may not know he is lying over and over again.”

Perhaps Pritzker’s harshest criticisms, though, were saved for Elon Musk, whose DOGE has been laying off thousands of federal workers across various agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, and he is now trying to re-hire retired FAA employees to help address the shortage.

“Incompetence, let’s start with that,” he said in response to questions about Musk’s actions, to thunderous audience applause. “The reason I think that Americans are beginning to react, and you’ll see more of it, is that the very things that people rely upon every day, it’s your veteran services, people who need therapy, they go to Veterans Administration for that; making sure that you’re flying safely; making sure in my state we have poultry and meat inspectors seems pretty important to all of us here.”

After a commercial break, the question-and-answer series with Pritzker continued — and the Musk-bashing continued right along with it.

When discussing the continued rise of egg prices — a signature promise in Trump’s final campaign stretch was to lower them and overall inflation — Pritzker said, “You think Elon Musk goes and buys eggs at the grocery store? No. He has no idea what’s happening. Your tomato prices are going up because we’re going to pay 25 percent tariffs on tomatoes coming from Mexico. This is just an example, but it’s people who’ve been put in charge. They’re the most powerful, the wealthiest people have been put in charge…. They didn’t get elected by everyday Americans to do anything. They just got appointed by Donald Trump because they gave huge contributions. In the case of Elon Musk, $250 million that we know of… He bought his way in, and Donald Trump basically has handed the government over to this guy.”

“Many Republicans… will tell you that they think what [Pres. Trump is] doing is wrong,” Illinois @GovPritzker tells ‘The View.’ “But then out in public they’ll… vote with him.”

“They are afraid.” pic.twitter.com/Yc10SfEqFD

— The View (@TheView) February 28, 2025