24 hours that exposed a schism between Trump and Johnson and sent the government heading for a shutdown

CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump has long supported House Speaker Mike Johnson — hosting him on election night, bringing him to the Army-Navy college football game last weekend and endorsing him privately despite conservative complaints about the House’s actions.

That’s why it stunned many Republicans when Elon Musk — with Trump’s green light — helped hammer out Johnson’s short-term government funding deal Wednesday afternoon, triggering a flurry of social media posts that started early in the morning calling the deal “criminal.”

Trump followed up with threats to oppose any Republican who voted for it in a 2026 primary. And he injected another complication, calling for the debt ceiling — a tool Republicans have used for years to pressure Democrats to cut spending – must be repealed or eliminated entirely before he takes office. With funding set to expire late Friday night, Trump’s last-minute demands pushed the government perilously close to a shutdown.

The broadsides from Mar-a-Lago left Republican lawmakers wondering — given how much the president-elect and the Speaker of the House communicate — why it took until the last minute for the dramatic schism between Trump and Johnson to emerge, and for the agreement to fall apart.

“This is all very strange,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN. “This was completely avoidable.”

On Thursday night, Trump again endorsed Johnson as he tried to advance another plan that sought to appease the GOP standard-bearer’s demands. The 24-hour lashing underscored both Johnson’s weakness and Musk’s opening with Trump. The bill — which would have extended government aid for three months, raised the debt ceiling until 2027, extended the farm bill and included $110 billion in disaster relief — failed, with 38 Republicans voting against it.

The chaotic series of events has left the House leadership at odds, and the episode has raised questions about how Republicans on Capitol Hill, with a narrow majority and competing factions, will operate when Trump takes office.

And now the Democrats who helped Johnson save his job last spring say they are done helping the Louisiana Republican run his unruly conference.

Johnson was already close to a deal with congressional leaders on a short-term measure to fund the government when he sat in a private box with the president-elect at the Army-Navy game last weekend.

In video taken from the game, Trump can be seen deep in conversation with Johnson, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune and incoming Vice President JD Vance.

According to people familiar with the discussion, Trump told Johnson that he wanted a full-year spending bill — not a short-term fix — and that he wanted the debt limit to be part of that deal.

“He wanted the tires cleared,” a source with knowledge of the conversation told CNN, alluding to Trump’s desire to begin his term with the more contentious spending battles on the back burner so Congress could focus on passing his agenda.

At the fight, Johnson said, the source said, he tried to reassure the president-elect without promising to meet those specific demands — while acknowledging that there was not nearly enough time to reach agreement on the various bills that comprise the legislation , covering the government’s annual expenditure, known as an “omnibus”.

Later in the week, sources said Trump polled allies and advisers on what they thought were the pros and cons of a short-term funding measure or the long-term bill he began pushing publicly on Wednesday.

“It started when the text came out and some of the details were reported out. Until then, he was still trying to understand the pros and cons of the short term versus the long term,” a Trump adviser told CNN. “When the bill text came out and the pork of it was reported, he wanted to be involved.”

Throughout Wednesday, Trump and Musk debated their opposition to the bill — even before Musk began attacking the package intensely on X. Both agreed it gave too much to Democrats and was too expensive. Sources close to Trump insist that Musk was in lockstep with the president-elect when he went to X to go after the proposal and anyone who potentially voted for it, though Democrats raised the alarm that Musk’s public opposition, which came before Trump’s, was a sign of his power over the president-elect.

Vance has been tasked with being Trump’s eyes and ears on the hill, handling the bulk of the discussion with Johnson. On Wednesday night, the vice president-elect was spotted heading into the Republican-led speaker’s office while Trump enjoyed dinner with Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump has called lawmakers about the matter, but is letting Vance — an Ohio senator for a few more weeks — handle the dirty behind closed doors, a source familiar with the discussions said.

Trump allies at Mar-a-Lago had reached out to the speaker and his team in recent weeks, telegraphing the president-elect’s desire to deal with the debt limit before taking office.

But his position was not widely known. The conventional wisdom, according to several Trump allies, advisers and GOP officials, had been that they would wrestle with the debt ceiling as part of upcoming negotiations on a spending bill in March or a party-line package to implement Trump’s immigration and energy policies. priorities.

And even in conversations a week ago, three sources suggested the debt ceiling was not on anyone’s radar, with at least one Trump ally telling CNN, “It will be a June issue.” Adding such a politically toxic debate to the lame-duck to-do list was a plot twist.

“Introducing the debt ceiling conversation certainly added a new element,” a Trump adviser told CNN.

The transition did not respond to a request for comment. CNN has contacted Johnson’s office.

Trump, he and his aides have communicated, wants to start the new Congress and his second term with a clean slate — and without the potential for Democrats to keep a bargaining chip that could dilute their agenda.

Buoyed by even a razor-thin majority in both chambers, Trump believes Republicans will be in a more powerful position to demand stronger spending cuts during negotiations next year.

“Mar-a-Lago has signaled a lot of questions about letting a debt limit slide into next year,” a source involved in the talks told CNN, referring to the Palm Beach members’ club where Trump and his advisers have been crafting policy positions behind closed doors. doors. “Why are we letting something that will be a leverage point for you stay in place for the next year?”

As late as Wednesday afternoon around 1 p.m. GOP House leaders told fellow Republicans they felt “positive” about getting the votes to pass the negotiated deal, according to multiple sources close to the negotiations. Many GOP lawmakers weren’t happy with the measure — especially given the rushed timeline — but it appeared they were willing to swallow it.

However, a vote count made it clear that Johnson did not have the Republican support he needed to pass the measure with Democratic help.

One Republican blamed a lack of communication between Johnson’s office and rank-and-file members for why leadership was out of step with where the conference was. Lawmakers, for example, were surprised to find that a raise for themselves was included.

“We knew 92% of what this was going to be good before, but the last 8% was stupid,” Pennsylvania Representative Dan Meuser told CNN.

The bill may have been “already dead” by noon Wednesday, as one GOP lawmaker put it, but Musk’s megaphone kept it buried.

Social media posts by Musk and Donald Trump Jr. fueled a wave of disgruntled phone calls to lawmakers’ offices.

By 3 p.m., a GOP source described the situation as “breakdown.” And Johnson’s problems quickly evolved from internal grumbling over the funding bill to major public questions about his future as speaker. On Thursday morning, one of the most vocal House conservatives, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, to have flipped her support to the Louisiana Republican and openly floated the unlikely situation of Musk as speaker.

Several frustrated Republicans have told Johnson and his leadership team they should have voted Wednesday when they had the votes, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

“We’re going to regroup and we’re going to come up with another solution,” Johnson told reporters after Thursday’s vote failed. “So stay tuned.”