Democrats are suggesting Elon Musk is a “shadow president” who is eclipsing President-elect Donald Trump after he played a pivotal role in killing a government spending bill.
Early on Wednesday morning, Musk announced his opposition to legislation meant to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown, posting about the funding more than 100 times that day. He criticized the continuing resolution for containing a slew of costly, unrelated provisions, warning that any Republican who voted for the 1,547-page bill could expect to see a primary challenge.
While Trump remained on the sidelines for most of the day, Musk was in attack mode, drawing the attention of Democrats who asked whether he was “in charge” of Republicans, even suggesting that he was usurping Trump’s authority.
The tactic might have gotten under Trump’s skin, as he chimed in just after 5 p.m. to rail against the bill himself.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who caucuses with Democrats, led criticism about Musk’s budget battle with a post to X.
“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government. 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,” Sanders warned.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Maxwell Frost (D-FL), and Daniel Goldman (D-NY) were a few of the House lawmakers insinuating Musk’s star is eclipsing Trump, as they likely tried to get a reaction out of the president-elect.
“It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump. Shadow President Elon Musk spent all day railing against Republicans’ CR, succeeded in killing the bill, and then Trump decided to follow his lead,” Jayapal wrote in a post to X.
Frost said in a post to Bluesky: “Republican Unelected Co-President Elon Musk has killed the bill to keep the government from shutting down on Friday. All he had to do was make a few social media posts.”
“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this. It’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this,” Goldman said during a MSNBC interview:
Democratic strategist David Axelrod added, “So will President-elect Musk join the budget negotiations now?”
Musk assumed a prominent role in Trump’s campaign when he endorsed the GOP leader in July following the first assassination attempt on the president-elect. The SpaceX titan particularly played a pivotal part in stumping for Trump in Pennsylvania, a state considered essential to win in order to secure the presidency. Trump subsequently secured a decisive victory in the battleground state on Nov. 5, marking a key shift in his fortunes relative to 2020.
After Trump won the election, he appointed Musk to co-lead a brand new Department of Government Efficiency, a task force seeking to slash the federal bureaucracy and cut wasteful spending. The two men appear to have cemented a strong relationship ahead of the inauguration, with Musk often being seen with the president-elect on his personal plane, at his Florida Mar-a-Lago home, and at multiple sports events, including the UFC heavyweight championship.
A Trump team official told NBC News Trump waited to blast the spending until early Wednesday evening, hours after Musk announced opposition, because “he let everyone wonder what he wanted to do.”
“All eyes were on him. When he moved, it was over. He’s president before becoming president,” they continued.
Prominent Trump allies such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also clapped back at Democratic allegations of a Musk takeover by saying, in reality, it was “the American people engaging and posting their outrage on X that killed the bill.”
“The Uniparty is aiming their fire at Elon Musk and blaming him for killing their incestuous porkfest gov funding bill. However, it was the American people engaging and posting their outrage on X that killed the bill. But they hate Elon because he bought X and protected free speech, which allowed the people to fight back and stop another Uniparty s*** sandwich. The truth is they hate you, the people, for standing up to them,” Greene said on Thursday.
Many Republicans believed the spending bill would have passed if Johnson had called a vote on it before Trump’s statement Wednesday evening, per a Punchbowl News report.
Current government funding expires on Friday night, which means lawmakers will need to pass a spending bill before then if they wish to avert a government shutdown.
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Trump has proposed that instead of passing a spending bill with provisions tacked on, GOP lawmakers instead eliminate the debt ceiling entirely. The tactic would not authorize the government to increase spending beyond the level Congress has approved but rather allow the government “to meet its existing obligations to citizens, vendors, and bondholders,” according to the Brookings Institution.
“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.