Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the Republican Circus Episode 1: The 2024 Budget Deal

Elect a clown and you get a circus. 

Elect a clown and an unelected co-clown and you get today's Republican Party.

A month out from the inauguration and we're already seeing a preview of what the next four years will entail: intra-Republican fighting and incompetence eventually being bailed out by sane Democrats all while the media continues to distort the true cause of the conflict. And while we've gotten used to this model any time a Republican president is in office, what we're seeing this time around is a new dimension with the inclusion of an unelected foreign billionaire now vying for influence in a very pronounced and public way. With a proposed cabinet that includes 13 billionaires, we are becoming an oligarchical kakistocracy with wealthy, incompetent men now in charge of the health, safety, and well-being of 340 million Americans. Knowing their self-interests are very different from yours and mine, we begin to understand exactly how and why the past week's events unfolded and will continue to unfold in the years to come. 

Last week was off to a seemingly undramatic beginning. On Tuesday, it was announced that Congress was set to vote on a bipartisan stopgap measure that would fund the government through March 14th. This measure would keep government funding at its current levels and would include $100 billion in disaster relief, $5.7 billion to build a new Virginia-class submarine building, and $2 billion for small businesses recovery among additional expenses. While there was likely to be some concern from GOP House fiscal conservatives, the fact that leadership had already done the negotiations meant that there was next to no opportunity for any sort of widescale revolt against the bill. By Tuesday evening, it was becoming apparent that maybe, just maybe, we'd have a drama-free budget dealing heading into the holiday season. 

Enter Elon Musk. 

Or should we say, President Elon Musk. Thanks to a series of tweets on Wednesday, Musk ended up singlehandedly derailing the bill citing false and misleading claims about what the bill could and couldn't do and he ended up sending a warning message to any Republican thinking about supporting the bill by saying they "deserve to be voted out" should they dare vote in favor. Later in the day, President In Name Only Donald Trump decided that he, too, should be involved and declared his opposition to the bill. Having gotten their marching orders from an unelected Republican billionaire donor and his vice president, the spineless Republican caucus predictably fell in line, leaving House Speaker Mike Johnson to scrap the bill and begin anew. 

Why would Elon Musk blow up the bill? I'm glad you asked. You see, Elon Musk has certain business interests. And like Donald Trump, he refuses to put aside those business interests as he takes on a potential role in a presidential administration. What that means is that Musk, like Trump, views the presidency as a way to enhance his own personal wealth at the expense of the American people. Musk's opposition to the funding bill stemmed from a provision that would make it harder for Musk to build his factories in China, a critical way for him to continue to exploit international labor laws while keeping domestic spending down for Tesla here in the United States. Like Trump before him, Musk sees a government by the rich and for the rich and sees no reason why policies shouldn't personally benefit him and his fellow class of billionaire elites. 

Republicans introduced a new bill on Thursday, this one with the blessing of President Musk and Vice-President Trump highlighted by the introduction of language that would eliminate the debt ceiling. But of course, now that the toothpaste was out of the bottle, this created an opportunity for the fiscal conservatives in the House to get on their power trip and 38 of them openly defied their South African president-elect and his VP and voted against the bill, creating chaos a mere day before a potential government shutdown. With Democrats united against the Musk/Trump bill, Speaker Mike Johnson tried for a third time on Friday, removing the Trump debt ceiling provision and relying on a united Democratic caucus and 170 Republicans to approve a spending bill along a 336-34 House vote, which was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate late Friday night and signed hours later by President Biden. After 60 hours of chaos, Congress officially ended its 118th legislative session by kicking the can down the road for all this to happen once again in mid-March of 2025. 

We should see all this as a harbinger of things to come. After all, there can only be so many competing billionaires in one single administration. But we should be encouraged that Democrats remain united and refuse to needlessly bail out Republicans of their own incompetence. They continue to be the adults in the room and this clearly won't be the last time that Speaker Mike Johnson relies on Democrats instead of the most hardline fiscal conservatives in his own party. While Johnson theoretically will have a slight majority for the 119th Congress, there can be no doubt that Hakeem Jeffries is the de-facto Speaker of the House. It's critical we give Congressman Jeffries our full support and he navigates the GOP Congressional clown car these next two years. 

This won't be the last time President Musk tries to pull a fast one on the American people. Nor will it be the last time that someone, either elected or unelected, in Trump's orbit attempts to derail and/or alter a bill or legislation in favor of personal business ambition. The good news is that their corruption is all out in the open. Like Elon, they will try and gaslight us. But the critical question we need to ask at every junction is who is driving this decision and why are they invested in this particular topic? More than likely, we will see other administrative decisions being driven by a particular billionaire's self-interest. Long gone are the days of Jimmy Carter putting his peanut farm in a blind trust to avoid any perception of having his personal business influence his politics. Instead, we have a bunch of billionaires who are more than happy to make business deals out in the open at the expense of the greater good. They see the presidency as their own personal AmEx card, to be used for their benefit. We're a month away from inauguration and we already have the incoming administration's first overt act of corruption derailed by their own greed and stupidity.

Let us hope this isn't the only time this happens.