Former Republican House Rep. turned infamous Trump hater Liz Cheney went scorched earth on tech billionaire and Trump jockey Elon Musk, on Musk’s own social media platform, after Musk promoted a Right-winger’s post that cited her past work in the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is currently under attack by the Trump Administration, at the direction of Musk and his unelected and completely unchecked DOGE team.
Cheney spent a large portion of her political career working as a USAID officer in US embassies, specifically in positions that related to Poland, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine. That work hails all the way back to the very beginning of Cheney’s career in the US government — a fact that Mike Benz, executive director of Foundation For Freedom Online, attempted to use against her in a post on Elon Musk’s X (formerly known as Twitter.)
Back in December, Benz penned an X post that said Cheney — a publicly vocal critic of Donald Trump who, despite her Republican roots, endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election — was “spawned out of USAID.” In that post, he included a screenshot of an article that noted that Cheney’s first positions within the US State Department, back in the early 2000s, largely involved matters in the Middle East, “including democracy promotion.”
This week, Benz reposted that post from December, as USAID is now firmly in Elon Musk and the Trump Administration’s crosshairs and news broke that Donald’s admin has placed U.S. aid workers on paid leave.
“Liz Cheney, who led Trump’s impeachment and the mass imprisonment campaign against thousands of Trump supporters, was spawned out of USAID,” Benz wrote.
Musk, who heads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — a resoundingly unchecked, unofficial, and unelected entity —that has been tasked by the Trump Admin to slash trillions of dollars out of the US federal budget, reposted Benz’s post with the caption, “Interesting.”
Musk’s passive-aggressive post quickly caught Cheney’s attention and she held absolutely nothing back against the controversial billionaire.
“Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen,” Cheney shot back in a response penned on Musk’s own social media platform.
Damn right, @Elon. I’m proud of what America did to win the Cold War, defeat Soviet communism, and defend democracy. Our nation stood for freedom. You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen. https://t.co/lYpGhmVJnT
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) February 5, 2025
This public spat between Cheney and Musk comes as Donald Trump has all but completely shut down USAID’s six-decade-long mission to deliver compassion and humanitarian aid to foreign countries.
Featured image via The Resistance Report Gallery