Trump and Musk are unleashing a new kind of chaos in Washington

CNN
—

Welcome to Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s new Washington.

The president-elect and the world’s richest man teamed up Wednesday to smash a short-term spending compromise orchestrated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the government open until early in Trump’s new term.

The stop-gap measure is packed with nearly $100 billion in aid for Americans affected by several national disasters, financial aid for farmers, a federal commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and a criminalization of revenge porn.

But the Trump-Musk deadlock plunged the capital into one of its classic year-end crises, cast Johnson’s hopes of keeping his job in extreme doubt and offered a taste of the chaos that could ensue in Trump’s second term.

A sense of unease was exacerbated by the 10th straight day of losses in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, matching a mark set during the Ford administration. The sales underscored a volatile national moment and some of the economic challenges Trump may face after the Federal Reserve warned that inflation will tick up next year.

The sabotage of Johnson’s funding initiative sparked shock and confusion on Capitol Hill. But for many of Trump’s supporters and boosters in the conservative media, who expect massive cuts to federal programs, the chaos is the point. Even if the impasse leads to a devastating government shutdown, it could represent progress for some, as the government itself is viewed with disdain on the populist right. And by taking aim at the Washington status quo even before taking the oath of office, Trump is doing exactly what he said he would do on the campaign trail.

But the sudden imbroglio also highlighted one of the central questions facing Trump in his second term: If he wants to implement his tax cuts, enforce his immigration overhaul, defend the country and leave a meaningful legacy, he will have to find a way to govern – even if it brings him into conflict with base voters and MAGA ideologues who seem happy to burn the government to the ground.

One of the mega disruptors is Musk. In his biography of the SpaceX pioneer, Walter Isaacson described the philosophy of the president-elect’s new super buddy as “Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat.”

The rocket mogul lived up to that mantra on Wednesday, unleashing pre-dawn attacks on Johnson’s plans. “This bill should not pass,” Musk wrote on X, opening a 70-post blast slamming the bill as full of “pork” spending and warning that anyone who voted for it would be dropped in the 2026 election .

Musk whipped up opposition to the bill throughout the day, creating a MAGA media frenzy before Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance issued a late-afternoon statement calling for a streamlined spending bill with no Democratic results. And to compound the pandemonium on Capitol Hill, they added another huge condition — for Congress to raise the government’s debt ceiling while Joe Biden is still president — a massive short-notice challenge.

It was not immediately clear how closely Trump and Musk coordinated. But the timeline of Musk’s push and the president-elect’s belated entry into the public fray offered demoralized Democrats an opening. New York Rep. Dan Goldman conjured up a scenario on X that was clearly meant to get under the president-elect’s skin. “As the shadow Pres-Elect, Elon Musk is now calling the shots for House Rs on government funding while Trump hides at Mar-a-Lago behind his handlers,” Goldman wrote. “It increasingly looks like we’re in for 4 years with an unelected oligarch running the country by pulling his puppet’s strings.”

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN’s Manu Raju after speaking with the president-elect that Trump had been blindsided by Johnson. He said Trump is “not read into this … and he’s just learning about it … he’s just reading about it.”

The collapse of the stop-gap spending bill presented Johnson, Trump and Democrats with risky dilemmas.

As lawmakers left the Capitol Wednesday night with no certainty of what would happen next or when they would be able to go home for the holidays, the country lurched into the first crisis of the second Trump era.

Outgoing Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell summed up the uproar with a 2025 prediction.

“Oh, that’s the way it’s going to be next year,” he told his GOP colleague, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, as they passed in a Senate corridor.

The size of Johnson’s bill sparked an uproar in the conservative media. MAGA experts were particularly outraged that lawmakers awarded themselves a pay raise in the measure, weeks after an election that partially reversed inflation.

Trump supporters are asking this question: After Republicans won in 2024 on a promise to gut the federal government and cut budgets, why would they make their first act since Trump’s triumph a classic year-end spending spree?

“I’ve been a ‘no’ to it for a long time,” GOP Rep. Tim Burchett CNN’s Jim Acosta. The Tennessee lawmaker added: “President Trump was driving to change things. I say if we’re going to pass something, send it about three days to the next Congress and hand it over to Trump and let him do it.”

But many Republicans are worried about the political ramifications of a shutdown. And assuming they want a way out, any new bill must recognize current realities. Democrats — for a few more weeks — control the Senate, so they should have an incentive to cooperate. And the GOP speaker will need Democratic votes in the House because of his slim majority and the reluctance of some on his side to support any spending.

Johnson said he had tried to sell his bill to Musk and his co-chair of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, via a text chain. Explaining the “conservative play calling” behind his plan, he said on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning: “Instead of doing, you know, (Democratic Senate Majority Leader) Chuck Schumer, Biden, spending for 2025, we’re pushing this decision into March.” He continued: “So the draw is that we want the Republican-controlled Congress and Trump back in the White House, and we have to determine spending for 2025.”

But all Johnson managed to do was put his own job in jeopardy.

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told CNN’s Raju that the speaker would not get his vote in the next Congress, adding that “it would take a Christmas miracle” for him to change his mind. And Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that a number of lawmakers agreed. “The speaker does not have the votes right now. He had to be saved by Donald Trump, Lanza said.

But if Johnson is in danger — just days after appearing at the Army v. The Navy battle in a show of unity with Trump and Musk on Saturday — his fate could complicate Trump’s big inauguration party next year.

Republicans are desperate for a quick start to make the most of the peak of Trump’s power. A runoff for speaker — like the 15 rounds it took to elect short-lived Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 — would be counterproductive.

And if Johnson, himself a last-ditch backseat compromise, can’t be elected speaker, who can?

In one of his posts on X, Musk suggested that the best course for Republicans would be to freeze Washington until Trump takes office. “No bill should be passed (by) Congress before January 20,” he wrote. That would create a government shutdown that would last for weeks, saddle the president-elect with a massive crisis as soon as he takes office, and cause significant economic damage. And the Republican House majority will be even smaller to start Trump’s term than it is now, making it even harder to pass anything.

Musk’s sabotage of the Johnson stop-gap spending measure gave Democrats an early chance to land a blow on the incoming Trump presidency.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries raised the plight of Americans who would be harmed by a government shutdown. “We reached a bipartisan agreement to meet the needs of the American people and provide assistance to farmers, families, children, seniors, veterans, men and women in uniform and working-class Americans,” the New York Democrat said. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt ordinary Americans across this country.”

House Democrats will meet Thursday morning to discuss next steps. But Jeffries’ statement suggests they will stand firm and demand Trump back.

Politically, there is little incentive for them to help extricate Johnson and the president-elect from their corner. After all, Trump demanded that they cooperate to pass a repeal bill without any of their priorities. And his order to raise the debt ceiling, which is expected to be reached in his second term, is a transparent attempt to place the political backlash for such a move on the current president before he leaves office and to spare himself. In fact, Trump said it himself: “Raising the debt limit isn’t great, but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch.”

Republicans have historically made lifting the government borrowing limit painful for Democratic presidents — several times driving the country close to a catastrophic debt default. So why should the Democrats help now?

The White House said it was up to Republicans to fix the mess in the House. But there’s no obvious path to it, meaning Washington is clouded by uncertainty ahead of the holiday season.

North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer told Raju he was frustrated that Trump hadn’t made his bottom lines clearer sooner. And asked if it was possible to raise the debt ceiling in just two days, he was doubtful.

“But you know, it’s almost Christmas, it’s amazing what people can do to get home.”