Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) said President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are “fascists” during a Tuesday appearance on CNN, comments prompted by a Wall Street Journal report that Musk ordered a slowdown of a military-grade Starlink service relied on by Ukraine.
According to Breitbart News’ account of the segment on CNN’s “The Arena,” host Kasie Hunt read the Journal’s reporting to Smith on air, noting that CNN was still working to confirm it. The Journal report said the decision to throttle the satellite internet service sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration, citing U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter.
Hunt told viewers that one of the people claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter before the decision to slow the service, but she cautioned that the detail came from a single source. Some U.S. officials told the Journal that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump did not specifically order retribution against Ukraine.
‘Do I want to use the F word here?’
Asked for his reaction, Smith said it “certainly seems like” Musk and Trump “decided to weaken Ukraine and put them in a weaker position.” He acknowledged the likely counterargument — that the goal was to force Kyiv to the bargaining table — before rejecting it.
“But again, I think it’s just, you know, Trump siding with Putin and Musk being part of it,” Smith said, according to the Breitbart clip. “And look, do I want to use the F word here? I don’t know. Autocrat certainly. Probably fascist, okay? Trump and Musk are fascists, okay? They think strong men — and certainly in Musk’s case, preferably strong white men should rule the world.”
The remark lands Smith, a longtime Democratic congressman from Washington state, among the sharper congressional reactions to the Journal’s reporting on Starlink and Ukraine. It also illustrates how quickly the story moved from national security reporting into partisan combat: within hours of the Journal’s piece, a sitting Democratic lawmaker was applying the fascist label to both the president and the world’s richest man on live television.
A single-sourced claim at the center
The underlying reporting remains contested in its details. Hunt stressed on air that the assertion that Trump and Musk discussed the throttling ahead of time rested on one person’s account, and that CNN had not independently confirmed the Journal’s story. The competing characterization from some U.S. officials — that Musk acted alone — cuts against the claim of a coordinated presidential decision, which is precisely the element Smith’s criticism leans on.
The episode also revives a long-running debate over Musk’s role as a private contractor whose satellite network has become infrastructure for a war effort. Starlink terminals have been central to Ukrainian military communications, and any decision by a single company to limit service carries obvious consequences for a battlefield — and obvious political ones in Washington.
Neither the White House nor Musk responded directly to Smith’s remarks in the Breitbart account. The congressman’s office did not add to his on-air comments in that report.
The exchange is the latest sign that Ukraine policy remains one of the most volatile fault lines between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration, and that Elon Musk — an unelected figure with enormous control over communications technology — has become a central target of Democratic criticism alongside the president himself.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/10/20/dem-rep-adam-smith-trump-and-musk-are-fascists/