"Let the scams roll": Elon Musk exploits culture wars to turn MAGA against consumer protections

Most Americans have not heard much about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but make no mistake: They benefit daily from the existence of this federal agency. It was founded during Barack Obama's presidency, and it's been quietly blocking banks and other financial institutions from engaging in the shady and often fraudulent practices that led to the 2008 financial crash. The CFPB has restored $21 billion to consumers exploited by banks, lenders and payment apps. It's dry and boring work, but it has protected our economy and kept money in the pockets of ordinary working people. 

So of course Elon Musk and Donald Trump hate it. And it's not just them, either. The Project 2025 ghouls, tech billionaires and the more depraved offices on Wall Street all vibrate with rage at the CFPB, which is an obstacle for rich people who want to steal money from everyday Americans. Musk and his Project 2025 henchman, namely Russ Vought of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), are launching a plan to illegally shutter the federal agency. Only Congress has the authority to do that, so Vought has declared this is a "post-constitutional" era in which Republicans are no longer bound by law. Still, even in the fascism-friendly circles of the MAGA base, taking away an agency whose main job is to keep banks from stealing from you is a hard sell.

Musk and his allies have a clever way to sell the pro-scam agenda to the MAGA base: Tell them that the CFPB has girl cooties. 

I wish I could say it's deeper than that, but it's not. While the CFPB was technically created by a 2010 bill written by two men, Sen. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn, it's the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. She came up with the idea while still a law professor at Harvard. Because it's so strongly associated with a woman, the tech billionaire class has leaned hard into portraying the agency's anti-fraud work as if it's your mom telling you to clean your room. Unfortunately, this bet has paid off, as the MAGA base would rather let robber barons drain their entire bank accounts rather than accept that a woman might know what she's talking about. 

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The ham-fisted misogyny deployed to demonize the CFPB was recently illustrated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's cringeworthy interview on Joe Rogan's podcast in January. A mere 20 minutes into a three-hour interview, Zuckerberg started complaining about the CFPB's investigation of Meta. Even as he unconvincingly claimed he doesn't "even know what [CFPB] stands for," he made sure listeners knew "it's the financial organization that Elizabeth Warren had set up." Rogan responded with explosive contempt. "Oh great," he sneered, and boy, did Zuckerberg light up. Rogan's reaction confirmed that, as far as his audience was concerned, all they needed to know is the CFPB has girl cooties and now they will, as Zuckerberg hoped, also hate it. 

Zuckerberg pretending to be ignorant about why his company was being investigated is a dead giveaway that this is all manipulation. As the Washington Post reported in October, court filings showed that CFPB officials were concerned Meta "improperly used financial data obtained from third parties in its highly lucrative advertising business." Meta had already paid billions to both the U.S. and European regulators for Facebook's violations of privacy laws, so it's not a surprise that CFPB regulators didn't trust them with people's private financial data.

But this isn't just about Facebook. There are growing concerns over the tech industry's attempts to enter the financial sector in ways that evade existing banking laws that protect customers. Musk has long yearned to stick his snout into that world, saying he wants to convert X into a payment app, like Venmo, and even suggesting he could control the "entire financial world" of users. Late last month, the company announced they are creating the "X Money" app, which is a digital wallet. So it's with great self-interest that Musk now goes after the CFPB, the organization that would prevent him from overcharging or otherwise defrauding people who sign up for this service. 

As economist Paul Krugman wrote, "CFPB was created to protect Americans from financial predation, and has done a very good job of doing so. But now we have government of, by and for financial predators." And those people want to get rid of everyone who will stop them from ransacking the wallets of the little guys. 

As pickled as his brain is, Musk knows better than to complain that the government is making it too hard for billionaires like him to rip off the little guy. So instead, he's leaning hard into the "girl cooties" argument of CFPB, tweeting invective at Warren and calling her "Senator Karen," in case the sexist implications weren't blunt enough. His fanboys get the message, using sexist slurs against her and screeching that she's stupid and controlled by men. There's no attempt to address her actual arguments. It's just man-children sniveling incessantly that a woman has political power. 

Musk's buddy, tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, has also joined in the sexist blitz. In November, he went on Rogan's podcast — where else? — to launch into an extended tantrum about how women are harshing the tech bro vibe. He demonized Bluesky, a social media app that is gaining users who are sick of Twitter's dysfunction, as "Bluecry," because you know, liberals are all girls and girls are crybabies. He complained, "On the left, what people believe is that women are only always and ever victims," which is truly rich coming from tech billionaires who do nothing but whine all the time. And, of course, he attacked the CFPB as " Elizabeth Warren’s personal agency that she gets to control."

This is a lie, of course. Warren is a champion of the CFPB, no doubt, but the decisions that so anger the Silicon Valley right-wing elite were made by Rohit Chopra, who ran the agency during the Biden administration. Chopra is even more aggressive than Warren in his concerns about the dangers of letting the tech industry encroach on the financial sector. But he's a man, so there's a chance that Musk fanboys might accidentally catch themselves listening to what he's saying and realize that the CFPB is there to protect them against financial grifters. By making Warren their punching bag, however, the tech bros can convince their followers to effectively yell, "Shut up, Mom!" and never hear a word of her argument. 

It's a shame they're so blinded by sexism because Warren's response to all this has been a model of common sense and compassion for the financial worries of regular people. On Rachel Maddow's show Monday, Warren explained that the CFPB "is the cop on the beat for the cheaters" and that they return money to people who have been scammed. The only point in shutting it, she said, is to "let the scams roll on." She took to X Monday to warn people that, if Musk succeeds, "CEOs on Wall Street will once again be free to cheat you out of your savings."

There is no better illustration of how Republicans use culture war grievance to trick their supporters into voting against their own self-interest. Most working people are, in the abstract, correctly suspicious of billionaires and worried about falling victim to financial fraud. Most people would say it's a good use of government power to restore money to those it was stolen from. So MAGA leaders don't want to talk about what the CFPB does because even their most die-hard followers would probably support the agency if they knew the truth. Instead, people like Musk, Rogan, and Zuckerberg set up a misogynist distraction. They understand that the MAGA base is blinded by their immature gender anxieties and loathing of smart women. They're so trapped by bigotry, that they don't even pause to ask what it is that this agency they're told to hate even does.