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Elon Musk flexes his political strength as government shutdown looms
The world’s richest man led the charge to kill a bipartisan spending deal, in part by promoting false and misleading claims about it.
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.”
On Wednesday, that prediction looked spot on. Wielding the social platform he purchased 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, 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.
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Musk reposted Republican lawmakers’ complaints about the spending measure, celebrating each as a win. He 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 the day, Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”
It was a remarkable day 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.
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The president-elect counts 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 $442 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)
On Thursday morning, Trump sought to reclaim control of the political debate for himself, issuing a threat of sorts to Johnson that he must not give in to Democrats as he tries 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.
But left unclear was whether Musk is a loose cannon pursuing his own agenda or the tool that Trump envisioned to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy when he appointed him to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has long railed about the undeserved power of wealthy business executives, appeared to have reached his own conclusion, sarcastically referring to Musk, the owner of X and Tesla, as the president.
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“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” Sanders wrote — on X, of course. “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.”
Conservative Republicans rallied behind Musk’s barrage of posts, with some even going so far as to suggest that the party should replace Johnson with Musk as speaker. In one post, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., noted that House rules don’t require the chamber’s leader to be a member of Congress.
“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” replied Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. 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. 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.)
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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.
Wednesday, however, was the first time Musk has been able to use his website as a digital whip, driving lawmakers to support his desired outcome. By the afternoon, House representatives and senators — some of whom had already voiced their disapproval of the bill before Musk’s outbursts — were posting on X about their “no” votes and echoing Musk’s calls to curb spending and support the efficiency effort.
“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.”
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He’s 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.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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