Once again exhibiting that grade school meanness that turns off at least half of the country, MAGA nation unleashed a battery of classless jokes on a legally blind witness appearing Wednesday before Marjorie Taylor Greene’s DOGE subcommittee.
Called to testify by the Democrats, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs for the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, discussed DOGE overreach. But it was his blindness, not his testimony, that was singled out by many leading MAGA influencers.
“Fun fact: A blind man was put in charge of the Project of Government Oversight. This is who the Democrats called up to oppose the DOGE agenda. The blind literally leading the blind. You can’t make this stuff up,” wrote Kyle Becker, a writer and producer for Sean Hannity’s Fox News channel show, on X.
Hedtler-Gaudette, a respected nonpartisan watchdog on government waste and corruption, called out the Trump administration for eliminating inspectors general and repeated widespread concerns over the inherent conflicts of interest in having Elon Musk, whose businesses have taken roughly $18 billion in federal contracts, deciding what government agencies and programs will get the ax.
“These facts, as well as already-emergent legal challenges, make it unlikely that DOGE will provide the check against waste, fraud and abuse that its proponents hope for,” he said in his opening statement.
He went on to suggest “concrete and actionable solutions” to the problems of government inefficiency, corruption and abuse.
“It seems to me that if an administration were serious about wanting to root out waste, fraud and abuse, they would support and resource whistleblowers and inspectors general, they would not demonize them, and they would certainly not fire them en masse in an unlawful midnight purge,” Hedtler-Gaudette stated during the hearing.
MAGA, meanwhile, could only see bad puns.
“The Democrats’ star speaker, Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of Government Affairs at the NGO ‘Project On Government Oversight’ (POGO), says he can’t see any widespread abuse or waste from government spending,” right-win gadfly Ian Miles Cheong posted alongside a clip of Hedtler-Gaudette’s testimony. “He is also blind, and is literally unable to see anything. The perfect witness.”
Hedtler-Gaudette never said that he hadn’t seen any widespread abuse or fraud from government spending. Instead, he was pointing out there’s nuance in every case. “It is just simply not the case that improper payments are only a function of bad people doing bad things with bad intent,” he said.
Not the Bee, a spinoff of conservative humor site The Babylon Bee, which describes itself as featuring “absurd and hilarious (but real) news that seems like it should definitely be satire,” seemed like they were in fact, a satire of a MAGA site with this (since-edited) headline:
”Blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste,” the site embedded Cheong’s tweet and wrote that “it’s just a little on the nose” that the “Democrats called an “expert” to say he sees no widespread government waste … and he’s blind?”
Criticism of the MAGA takes was widespread.
“The party who has historically championed the disabled with their Pro-Life position is now mocking the disabled,” wrote one.
“Dylan is a brilliant, nonpartisan advocate for effective government. The MAGA right revels in cruelty and stupidity, feasting off of each other’s ignorance,” wrote an X user.
