Letters to the Editor: What is Elon Musk doing in the Oval Office acting like a president?

To the editor: The show put on for the news media by Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House to talk about his seeking out fraud and waste in the U.S. government would have been amusing if it weren’t so deceitful and ironic. With a convicted felon for a president and a billionaire sidekick, one probably does not have to look beyond the White House for what Musk and President Trump are seeking.

Cutting the funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, less than 1% of the total federal government budget, will deprive starving children of food, withhold lifesaving drugs from the very ill and withdraw support from people fighting for democracy in their own repressive countries.

No wonder the world’s authoritarians welcome the Trump administration. The weakness of our democracy serves to strengthen their autocracies.

And Musk’s 4-year-old son, brought to the Oval Office for this news conference, will never suffer the consequences to which his father is condemning hungry children elsewhere in the world.

Donna Sloan, Los Angeles

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To the editor: If a woman stood in front of the press to speak in the Oval Office wearing a baseball cap with her 4-year-old son on her shoulders, she would be laughed out of the room and proclaimed unserious, unprofessional and incompetent.

Cheryl Kohr, Palos Verdes Peninsula

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To the editor: It was disgusting the way Musk used his feeble attempts at humor and his young son as a prop to obscure and soften his actions when faced with legitimate questions from the White House press corps.

What’s next, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller standing in the background holding two puppies?

Marshall Barth, Encino

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To the editor: Musk’s scheme to entice and pressure honorable career civil servants to leave government service with buyout offers reflects poorly on the goals proclaimed by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

The hasty and chilling buyout offer with the threat of mass layoffs in the coming months is a not-so-subtle attempt to make a civilian federal employee’s job as miserable as possible. Is this an acceptable method to reward career civil servants amid global turmoil and conflict? What exactly are the intended efficiencies when America’s security and prosperity are in jeopardy?

Would America ever have succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden in a 2011 raid in Pakistan without the vast expertise of the intelligence community? Does DOGE quantify how this country avoids deadly and costly conflict every day based on professional risk avoidance?

We trust career civil servants across the federal government with our lives because they make America safer and more resilient. Purging the federal workforce of talent and critical thinkers risks making this country waver in opposing our adversaries and protecting our allies.

Anthony Arnaud, Laguna Niguel