According to Bloomberg, Musk tweeted on Wednesday, “Delete CFPB.” He claimed it’s because “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” Destroying the CFPB just happens to be a Project 2025 goal, too. What a coinkydink!

Let’s be clear about the good the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau does and has done to protect Americans from financial harm:

Via The Washington Post:

Formed in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis, the CFPB has a broad mandate to protect Americans from unfair, deceptive or predatory financial practices. Its current director — Rohit Chopra, a Democrat — has recently issued rules meant to shield people from medical debt, make it easier for them to switch banks and limit the fees they face from falling behind on their credit card bills.

Since its founding, the CFPB has secured more than $19 billion in consumer relief, while penalizing large financial institutions and technology firms for allegedly mishandling Americans’ money. Its oversight often has stoked the ire of the nation’s biggest banks, credit card companies and other lenders, which have sued the bureau repeatedly over charges of regulatory overreach.

But Trump, the guy who supposedly wants to make life better for struggling Americans, has always worked to sabotage the CFPB. To put it another way, he's willing, if not eager, to allow his billionaire bros to take further advantage of American consumers. “During his first term, Trump took steps to largely neutralize the agency, easing the CFPB’s enforcement of banks,” Bloomberg noted. It was under President Joe Biden and Director Chopra that “the agency has taken an aggressive regulatory approach to consumer finance, cracking down on home foreclosures and bank overdraft fees.”

What’s duplicative about that? Don’t make me laugh… or cry.

It’s not just Trump and Musk who want to make it easier for billionaires to prey on less fortunate Americans. It turns out “Some of the president’s former aides, meanwhile, have called for the bureau to be abolished entirely as part of the conservative blueprint known as Project 2025,” The Post reported. Also, “The ideas have broad support among Republicans on Capitol Hill, some of whom have signaled they will pursue their own new limits to the CFPB’s powers and funding once the party assumes control of the House and Senate next year.”

But it’s not just about enriching the finance billionaire bros by allowing more predatory behavior, it’s also about enriching all Trump’s billionaire bros with fatter tax cuts.

As I reported in September, Musk’s bigger plan, with Trump’s blessing, is to pay for bigger billionaire tax cuts by slashing government services for the rest of us. He’ll be helped in that endeavor by fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.

In addition to consumer finance protections, the two are itching to get rid of the Department of Education (which provides funding for special education and for schools in lower-income districts, among other things). They are also looking at slashing the Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ medical services. You can read that as “privatizing VA services” and another big financial windfall for the billionaire bros.

My colleague, Red Painter, started a great C&L series called FAFO on other ways Americans are in for a rude awakening when they find out how Trump has always looked out for his billionaire donors and backers, not the rest of America he pretends to care about.