OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Argentina’s President Javier Milei emboldened an enthusiastic crowd of conservatives gathered outside Washington to keep supporting measures to shrink the size of government, explaining his methods are similar to those started by President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
Milei is the man behind the chainsaw waved effusively onstage by Musk becoming the most memorable part of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, this year.
In a Saturday speech in Spanish, Milei expressed support for the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, saying it is out of line with the president’s agenda and claiming it was wasteful.
“The only rational path is to shrink the size of the state as much as possible,” Milei said. “Reducing the size of the State is in itself an act of justice.”
Milei quoted in his speech an influential libertarian intellectual from Pennsylvania, Albert J. Nock, who wrote in his 1935 book “Our Enemy, the State” about the struggle between state power and social power.
“Our method is similar to that of our dear friend Elon Musk,” Milei said. “To go office by office, keep in place what is working and get rid of the rest. That’s why I gave him a chainsaw.”
The Argentine leader used a different chainsaw as a prop during his 2023 campaign to symbolize his proposals to shred the bloated state. The red chainsaw gifted to Musk was engraved with Milei’s slogan “Viva la libertad, carajo,” which is Spanish for “Long live liberty, damn it.”
When Musk first began toying with the idea of forming a taskforce to downsize the federal workforce during an interview with Trump on X last August, they both talked about the Argentine leader. Musk praised his extreme austerity measures that had laid off tens of thousands of public sector workers and cut pensions to reverse spending that caused the country to default on its debts.
Milei also attended CPAC last year and met with Trump backstage, exchanging a close hug. Milei was the first foreign leader to meet with Trump after he won the election, but before he took office. He was also invited to the inauguration on Jan. 20.
Trump is addressing the conservative gathering later Saturday.
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