Stephen Colbert Tears Into Elon Musk’s ‘Crack Team of Recent Children’

Stephen Colbert ripped into Elon Musk’s recent decision to give his inexperienced college-aged engineers access to sensitive government records.

While covering the developments with Musk’s new DOGE department—the Department of Government Efficiency—Colbert explained, “Musk is not doing this alone. He’s brought along a crack team of recent children, a group of engineers between the ages of 19 and 24.”

“So they should be unstoppable, as long as their mission does not involve renting a car,” Colbert joked.

Colbert continued, quoting from a recent New York Times article, “With unlimited access to the government servers, Musk’s team plans to ‘pool all government contracts in a central database and use artificial intelligence to assess them for budget reductions.’”

“Ah, yes, famously accurate AI,” Colbert said, “The cutting-edge technology that told Google users to eat at least one small rock per day.”

The Late Show host added, “Now, I know on the surface that sounds dumb, but a rock is the only way to defeat the scissors that AI told you to swallow first.”

Colbert marveled at how Musk was even allowed to do any of this in the first place, given that he was never elected and that DOGE is a “made-up” department.

“Well, to smear a thin coat of legitimacy on Musk’s rampage, the White House gave him the title of Special Government Employee,” Colbert explained.

He joked, “Yeah, Special Government Employee. It’s super-official and super-important. It even comes with a plastic badge from Hasbro.”

Colbert also ripped into Republicans' many defenses of Musk’s recent actions.

He quoted Sen. Thom Tillis’ defense of Musk, in which the senator acknowledged that Musk’s behavior “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense” but still argued, “Nobody should bellyache about it.”

“Yeah, everybody knows you can fudge the Constitution a little bit,” Colbert replied. “That’s why at the very end it says, ‘Or not. You know, whatever.’”