Friday, June 6, 2025

Elon Musk completes his heel turn

Earlier this week, it looked like Elon Musk had delivered arch conservatives a gift when he trashed President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

On Tuesday, Musk called the legislation an “outrageous, pork-filled, disgusting abomination.” It seemed like a boon for some of the fiscal conservatives in the Senate, like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who criticized the fact the bill still blows up the deficit.

Had Musk stopped there, he probably would have given fiscal conservatives additional leverage.

House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted during his weekly press conference that he had tried to call Musk with no response.

Immediately, House Republicans and members of the Freedom Caucus — including its former chairman Scott Perry and Andy Ogles, who has tried to allow Trump to run for a third term — voiced their criticisms of the bill that they had when it was being deliberated.

Had Musk kept his critiques strictly to the bill, the tech tycoon could have offered an effective counterweight to give conservatives leverage against leadership given his immense wealth and his wide reach as owner of X.

First, he said that Trump would not have won the presidency, Republicans would have lost the House and would have a smaller minority in the Senate had it not been for Musk’s money, before huffing “such ingratitude.”

Then Musk lobbed the ultimate grenade when he said that Trump had not fully released the “Epstein files” —information related to the late financier who parlayed his money into sex trafficking teenage girls — because Trump was mentioned in them.

The Tesla founder took it a step further by calling for Trump’s impeachment.

Not only did Musk’s words permanently spike any chance for reconciliation. It killed any chances for budget reconciliation, the arcane process through which Republicans hope to pass the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

Read more here.

By Eric Garcia

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

That’s way outside my lane.

FBI Director Kash Patel when asked by Joe Rogan "what the f*ck" was happening between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

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