Colorado Democrat Gov. Jared Polis on Monday praised President Donald Trump's order to end production of the penny, calling the decision a "great move."
Trump announced Sunday that he had directed the Treasury to stop producing pennies.
"For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents," Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. "This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time."
In response to Trump's announcement, Polis pointed out the benefits of eliminating the one-cent coin, which he said are both fiscal and environmental.
"As well as saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, there are major environmental benefits to eliminating the penny," Polis wrote in a post on X. "This is a great move."
The popular two-term governor has apparently been pushing to get rid of the penny since at least December, writing, "Eliminating the penny would save over $300,000,000 per year (every penny costs over three cents to make) and replacing the dollar bill with a dollar coin world [sic] save over a billion dollars a decade."
Polis tagged both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who were the designated co-chairs of the Department of Government Efficiency at the time. Ramaswamy has since left DOGE to run for Ohio governor.
Following news that then-President-elect Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services, Polis said he was looking forward to working with the environmental lawyer on a range of issues to "make America healthy again."
"I'm excited by the news that the President-Elect will appoint @RobertKennedyJr to @HHSGov," Polis wrote in a post on X on Nov. 14. "He helped us defeat vaccine mandates in Colorado in 2019 and will help make America healthy again by shaking up HHS and FDA [the Food and Drug Administration]. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans (which I think are terrible, just like mandates) but what I'm most optimistic about is taking on big pharma and the corporate ag oligopoly to improve our health."
Despite Monday's praise for the president, Polis slammed Trump's tariffs on the platform earlier in the month, saying they will hurt residents of his state and Americans in general.
"Trump's tariffs will be a tax on Coloradans and American families, and increase the cost of everything from food to gas," he wrote in a post on X on Feb. 1. "Trump's tariffs make us less competitive, hurt people and quite frankly make no sense."