In news reports from around the country, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden has been quoted as saying his office has been inundated by calls in recent days about Elon Musk, not President Trump: “My constituents, and a majority of this country, put Trump in the White House, not this unelected, weirdo billionaire.”

Golden, like his mentor U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, always tries to have it both ways. In spite of this, he only won reelection by a narrow margin, and over 12,000 voters in the Second District either left the line for that race blank or wrote in someone else.

Musk does indeed make the perfect villain. Completely lacking in empathy, Musk tweets that the Department of Education is going to be “deleted,” while his moronically named Department of Government Efficiency accesses Treasury data on millions of Americans. He may well prove to be Trump’s Achilles heel.

But it’s Trump who’s the reason for all this unrest. Keep in mind that Trump won by a plurality, not a majority as Golden says, and that the number of eligible voters who chose not to vote clocked in at 36%. Our House representative should find some of the independence he touted during the Biden administration and start working harder to oppose Trump’s cuts, including to school lunch programs, domestic violence shelters and Medicaid.

Musk may be the unelected face of these policies, but Trump appears to be open to every mean-spirited, crackpot idea that his minions propose, and it’s Trump’s policies Golden needs to oppose.

Renee Cote, Auburn