The congressman floats the theory that Musk has promised Trump a ‘windfall’ if he does the billionaire’s bidding

Democratic representative Dan Goldman of New York suggested that on Thursday evening Elon Musk would give the president-elect Donald Trump with a “windfall” if the future Commander-in-Chief does the X owner’s bidding.

Tesla’s CEO was successful in his efforts to kill a continuing resolution set to allow the government to remain funded through Christmas, forcing Speaker Mike Johnson back to the drawing board.

Musk tweeted against the bill on Wednesday before Trump followed suit, pushing for it to be voted down. Speaker Mike Johnson then withdrew the bill before introducing a shorter version Thursday, which was rejected, although it was backed by both Musk and Trump.

Goldman appeared on MSNBC shortly before the vote on the new spending package Thursday.

“Congressman, it occurs to me, the founding fathers, they made their mistakes, but they had a president, I think, for a reason,” host Chris Hayes told Goldman. “You can kind of see the problem with the co-president model. If the two co-chairs don’t agree, it’s hard to get anywhere. The two newly elected co-chairs, I think. But I can’t really understand who is where on what, that you can get a way forward.”

“Let’s get one thing straight – there appears to be one president. It’s Elon Musk, who has his own very self-interested view of everything, including the fact that he wanted to remove restrictions on … American companies investing in China .I wonder why,” Goldman told Hayes in a possible reference to a large Tesla factory in Shanghai, Mediaite noticed.

“He has his own interests solely related to his own federal contracts, his own business interests,” he added. “He has no idea how the government works or how the government runs. But he spent almost $300 million to get Donald Trump elected. There are rumors that he’s going to use X to buy or merge with Truth Social , which would give Donald Trump a huge windfall.”

Goldman went on to say that Musk has Trump “in a vice.”

“It’s very clear that Elon Musk is now engaged. There’s no way Donald Trump wasn’t aware of what these negotiations were for weeks and weeks and weeks,” Goldman said. “And the fact that he just wanted dropping the debt ceiling at the 11th hour after … Mike Johnson and the Republicans reached a bipartisan deal is absurd. But it’s because of Elon Musk.”

Goldman said, “We have to face the reality” that “right now we have President Elon Musk.”

“And Trump? Maybe he’s the vice president, I guess. Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he’s not the one calling the shots,” Goldman said.

Musk wrote on X Friday morning: “The political and legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now leaving the same message to drive a wedge between @realDonaldTrump and me. They will fail.”

Tech journalist Kara Swisher said during an appearance on CNN last month that Truth Social and X could merge and become a larger “propaganda agency.”

“He wants to use it as a propaganda tool, and that’s exactly why he bought it,” she said of Musk and his social media platform.

ONE Forbes analysis earlier this year found that three court rulings have set Trump back $574 million. The outlet estimated the president-elect has $410 million in cash and about $9 billion in assets, including about $6 billion worth of stock in his social media company.