Who's Elise Stefanik Sucking up to Now?
Poor Elise Stefanik. She spent a decade strenuously sucking up to Donald Trump and came up empty. Now she’s sucking up to someone new. Will she have better luck this time?
When she was first elected to Congress in 2014, Stefanik was often referred to as a moderate Republican. Nowadays, “moderate Republican” means anyone to the left of Heinrich Himmler. But back then, before the extinction-level event known as Donald Trump, there were still some House Republicans who could pass as rational beings, and Elise was one of them.
After the 2016 election, however, the congresswoman from upstate New York underwent an extreme MAGA makeover in the hopes of climbing the greasy pole of TrumpWorld. And like many of her fellow groveling toadies (Mike Pence, Pam Bondi, and Kristi Noem, to name just three) she discovered that loyalty to Metamucilini flows in only one direction.
How low did Elise go? Her resume is a profile in obsequiousness. 2019: Appointed herself the Donald’s #1 attack dog during his first impeachment. 2021: Became a full-fledged election-denier, signing an amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to invalidate the results in four battleground states. 2024: Expressed her concern about “the treatment of the January 6 hostages” during an unhinged appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” thus equating the QAnon Shaman with Nelson Mandela.
Would such brazen performances worthy of an industrial-grade sump pump pay off? Yes—at first. In 2021, she supplanted Trump critic Liz Cheney as GOP conference chair, becoming the third-ranking Republican in the House. Four years later, she nabbed her ultimate reward, as Trump nominated her to be ambassador to the United Nations. In no time at all, she’d be sitting at her cozy new perch in the General Assembly, eviscerating NATO and praising Vladimir Putin.
But just as Elise was packing for Manhattan, her story took a dark turn. With the GOP majority in the House suddenly looking as flimsy as Mike Johnson’s chances of being Raptured, Trump realized he needed his quisling Stefanik to remain in Congress to get his dystopian agenda across the finish line. Like Lucy punking Charlie Brown with the football, he cruelly withdrew her UN nomination at the last second, posting on Truth Social: “I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
This was doubly terrible news for Stefanik. In order to take the UN job, she had forfeited her post as GOP conference chair—so now she was, if I may quote Jean-Paul Sartre, “shit out of luck.” (That’s not a direct quote, but Jean-Paul did say, “All human activities are doomed to failure,” which is the French existentialist equivalent.)
Dusting herself off, Elise opted to run for governor of New York—which gave Trump yet another opportunity to screw her over. He refused to endorse her in the GOP primary and so, in an ironic twist for a woman who tirelessly campaigned to shred reproductive rights for women, she aborted her bid.
Her concurrent decision not to seek reelection to the House deserved a celebration to rival Taylor and Travis’s wedding, since it suggested this would be the last we’d hear from this egregious lickspittle. Alas, now we were the ones being punked: last month, Elise crawled out from under her rock and appeared in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, publishing an “opinion” piece that read more like a LinkedIn resume—garnished with that signature Stefanik sycophancy.
Who was the intended audience for Elise’s thinly veiled job pitch? Why, none other than Elon Musk, her ex’s ex and owner of X.
After briefly heaping praise on Elon for SpaceX’s just-completed IPO, Stefanik quickly pivoted to reminding all of us—but mainly Elon—that she had passionately defended him during her confirmation hearings for that ill-fated UN post.
She helpfully recalled that Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut had asked her “outrageous questions” about the Nazi-tastic salutes Musk performed at Trump’s post-Inauguration celebration. Stefanik offered this example of Murphy’s totally unreasonable inquiries: “What do you think of Elon Musk, perhaps the President’s most visible adviser, doing two ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes last night at the President’s televised rally?”
For posterity—or, more specifically, for Elon—she included her spirited response: “No, Elon Musk did not do those salutes… I was not at the rally, but I can tell you I’ve been at many rallies with Elon Musk, who loves to cheer when President Trump says we need to send our U.S. space program to Mars. Elon Musk is a visionary . . . [The Nazi salute allegation] is simply not the case . . . the American people are smart, they see through it. They support Elon Musk. We are proud to be the country of such successful entrepreneurs. That is one of our greatest strengths as Americans.”
Look, it’s not crazy for Elise to imagine that Elon might hire her. Anyone who hired a 19-year-old college dropout nicknamed "Big Balls” can’t be too picky. But I’m not sure that reminding the world about Elon’s Hitler salutes—even in service of defending his Hitler salutes—is the shrewdest strategy for a job-seeker. Furthermore, I don’t think Elise succeeded in hyping Musk’s brand: since her WSJ piece was published, SpaceX and Tesla stock have both plummeted in value, resulting in a $650 billion hit to Elon’s net worth. That said, I hope Elon hires Elise. There’s no one I’d rather see colonize Mars.
Let me say one positive thing about Elise: she went to Harvard. Then again, so did the Unabomber. You might think it’s unfair to compare Stefanik to the Unabomber, and it is—to the Unabomber. For all his flaws, he was way more ideologically consistent than Stefanik.
Hegseth, of course. Mars’s gravity is only 38% of Earth’s. The poor guy could finally do a pull-up there.