WASHINGTON: When President-elect Donald Trump picked “the Great Elon Musk,” the world’s richest man, to slash government spending and waste, he mused that the effort might be “the Manhattan Project of our time.”
By Thursday, that prediction looked spot on. Wielding the social media platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022, Musk detonated a rhetorical nuclear bomb in the middle of government shutdown negotiations on Capitol Hill.
In more than 150 separate posts on X, starting before dawn on Wednesday, Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called Musk on Wednesday to ask that he stop posting about the bill.
Musk also shared misinformation about the bill, including false claims that it contained new aid for Ukraine or $3 billion in funds for a new stadium in Washington. By the end of Wednesday, Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”
It was a remarkable moment for Musk, who has never been elected to public office but now appears to be the largest megaphone for the man about to retake the Oval Office. Larger, in fact, than Trump himself, whose own vaunted social media presence is dwarfed by that of Musk.
The president-elect has 96.2 million followers on X, while Musk has 207.9 million. (Musk is also far richer than Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $458 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)
This week also marked the first time Musk has been able to use his website as a digital whip, driving lawmakers to support his desired outcome. His actions had prompted a backlash from some lawmakers who recoiled at his interference in the legislative process. Some even accused him of acting more like the president or vice president than a billionaire executive.
“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has long criticized the power of wealthy business executives, wrote on X. “The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”
Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., the chair of the Agriculture Committee, told reporters that he “didn’t see where Musk has a voting card.”
Trump sought to reclaim control of the political debate for himself on Thursday morning, issuing a threat of sorts to Johnson that he must not give in to Democrats as he tries to find a way to keep the government operating without incurring the wrath of Musk.
“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
On Thursday evening, Trump endorsed a new effort by Johnson to avoid a government shutdown with a spending plan that suspends the nation’s debt limit for two years. In a social media post, the president-elect wrote that “all Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!”
Hours later, that spending deal failed to pass in the House, with 38 Republicans voting against the measure.
Trump tasked Musk to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy when he named him to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire. Both men are among a string of tech billionaires who have flocked to Trump’s Florida estate in recent weeks to cultivate their relationships with the president-elect.
Trump dined with Musk and Jeff Bezos, the world’s two richest men, at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday night, as Musk’s posts were roiling Washington. Bezos, the Amazon and Blue Origin founder who also owns The Washington Post, recently gave $1 million to the committee planning Trump’s inauguration. Musk was not initially expected to be part of the dinner but joined as it was underway, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private dinner.
Many House Republicans have been left deeply frustrated by Musk’s involvement in spending negotiations and legitimately concerned about his threat to find primary challengers to take on any lawmakers who vote for a spending bill he doesn’t like. Lawmakers said they were alarmed and that they have never seen a donor outwardly exact so much influence on policy after his preferred candidate won an election.
They are also stuck taking their cues from Musk’s social media feeds, where he is promoting members who are in agreement with him. Despite his occasional presence on the Hill and in his role leading DOGE, Musk does not interact directly with many members of Congress. Ramaswamy has been the one talking directly with them.
On the House floor Thursday, lawmakers were fuming that Musk is not a member of Congress and is exerting too much influence on their proceedings. Thompson, who was deeply involved in negotiating direct payments for farmers that are now effectively dead because of Musk, added, “I’m not sure he understands the plight of the normal working people right now.”
As their offices were flooded with calls, appropriators and lawmakers from rural areas were livid that Musk had spent the day posting on social media to effectively kill the bill. Members were glued to his nonstop feed as they walked to and from votes, and some privately expressed concerns about their own political futures if he went through with his threats.
Conservative Republicans, however, rallied behind Musk’s barrage of posts. Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told Fox News, “this is exactly what the American people voted for when they voted for Donald Trump.”
After Musk threatened on X to “vote out” any member who voted for the spending bill, Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., cheered. “In five years in Congress, I’ve been awaiting a fundamental change in the dynamic,” he wrote online. “It has arrived.”
Some Republicans even went so far as to suggest that the party should replace Johnson with Musk as speaker, noting that speaker candidates don’t have to be a sitting member of Congress to win the gavel.
“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on social media. She added: “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”
That kind of lavish praise could come back to haunt Musk, though people close to Trump say there is no evidence of any kind of a rift between the president-elect and his richest supporter.
Still, the president-elect gets famously irritable when the people in his orbit outshine him. Steve Bannon, once the chief strategist in the White House during his first term, abruptly departed after journalists focused attention on the power and influence he wielded. (One “Saturday Night Live” skit weeks into his presidency featured Bannon as the Grim Reaper standing behind the president and calling the shots in the Oval Office.)
One of Musk’s first posts about the spending bill came at 4:15 a.m. Wednesday in Washington.
“This bill should not pass,” the billionaire wrote.
Between posts about his own video game antics and SpaceX’s satellite internet service, he used his X account to call the bill “criminal,” spread misinformation about its contents and issue a rallying cry to “stop the steal of your tax dollars!”
His posts followed a similar pattern of past activity on X, where he can become hyper-fixated on a single issue that bothers him. As the most popular user on X, Musk has used his feed as a bullhorn to drive conversation on the platform and beyond.
By Wednesday afternoon, House representatives and senators — some of whom had already voiced their disapproval of the bill before Musk’s outbursts — were falling in line.
“Any Member who claims to support the @DOGE should not support this ‘CR of Inefficiency’ that does not have offsets!!,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., wrote on X, using shorthand for a continuing resolution to keep federal funding flowing. “Don’t get weak in the knees before we even get started!”
On Wednesday, narrative eclipsed truth. “The terrible bill is dead,” Musk posted just before 4 p.m. in Washington, closing his post with the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
He has used the refrain before, most notably when restoring Trump’s Twitter account in November 2022, shortly after buying the company. This time, the man who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars this election cycle to support Trump’s campaign used it to frame his own actions as the will of American citizens.
“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan. 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office,” Musk wrote on X. “None. Zero.”
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