Elon Musk dropped a rhetorical bomb on President Trump’s plans to pass a massive budget bill on Tuesday.
Musk, the world’s richest man, excoriated legislation that Trump calls big and beautiful as “a disgusting abomination.”
He also called the legislation “outrageous” and “pork-filled.” Referring to members of the House who had passed the bill and sent it along to the Senate, Musk added, “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
The remarks were all the more striking for coming just days after Musk departed from his role with the quasi-official Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). His departure was marked by a joint appearance with Trump in the Oval Office, at which they paid tribute to one another.
Musk had expressed misgivings about the spending legislation in an interview broadcast on “CBS Sunday Morning” this past weekend, musing that while such a bill could indeed be either big or beautiful, “I don’t know if it can be both.”
GOP leaders on Capitol Hill thought they had been able to assuage Musk’s concerns. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Tuesday that he had spoken to Musk for 20 minutes the previous day.
Johnson, who had to go through arduous efforts to get the bill passed in the House, said that in his Monday conversation, “I extolled all the virtues of the bill, and he seemed to understand that. We had a very friendly conversation about it.”
That left Johnson blind-sided by the billionaire’s rhetorical barrage on Tuesday. Musk’s latest remarks were “very disappointing” and “terribly wrong,” Johnson lamented.
But Musk’s characteristically combative intervention raises two bigger questions.
One is whether it will land so hard among Republican senators that it could capsize the bill itself.
The other is whether it presages a larger willingness on Musk’s behalf to go against the wishes of Trump, the president whom Musk spent more than $250 million getting elected — and who gave him enormous power at the heart of government.
The Trump-backed budget bill, which also includes a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, already faced uncertain prospects in the Senate.
Republicans hold 53 seats in the 100-member body, but fiscal hawks and more moderate members alike have yet to signal they are willing to back the legislation.
Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Mike Lee (Utah) are all in the first category, expressing concern that the bill fails to curb the long stretch of budget deficits that have created an astronomical national debt. The debt currently stands at around $36 trillion.
At the other end of the GOP ideological spectrum, many insiders are watching Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) for signs of how hard they will resist proposed changes to Medicaid that are projected to cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.
Musk is aligned with the first camp.
After Musk’s initial blast on Tuesday, Paul took to social media to write, “I agree with Elon. We have both seen the massive waste in government spending and we know another $5 trillion in debt is a huge mistake.”Musk, in turn, amplified Paul’s message to his 220 million followers on X.
Musk also reposted critiques of the legislation from Lee, who said the Senate “must” make the bill better, and from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), one of two House Republicans to vote against the legislation in the lower chamber.
Musk’s alignment with Paul was especially notable on a day when Trump had lambasted the Kentucky senator for his reluctance to back the legislation.
Trump had written on social media on Tuesday morning that Paul had “very little understanding” of what was in the spending bill, adding, “He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not.”
In a second post, Trump complained that Paul “never has any practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are actual crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can’t stand him.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sought to swat aside Musk’s criticisms during Tuesday’s media briefing.
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” Leavitt said. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he’s sticking to it.”
But GOP senators are not quite so nonchalant. Johnson, the Wisconsin senator and fiscal hawk, told Politico that Musk’s social media blasts “got spread around pretty quickly” within the Republican conference.
GOP senators will also not have missed the implicit threat in a later social media post from Musk.
“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he wrote.
Such a message raises the specter of Musk using some of his enormous wealth to finance primary challenges to incumbents – despite a recent statement that he was likely to curb his political spending.
For Trump, the danger is that Musk will grow increasingly willing to voice his discontent.
Trump, of course, has no more elections to run. But Musk’s enormous X megaphone and his influential position near the apex of the online right makes him a highly dangerous potential critic.
Relations between Trump and Musk have not fully degraded yet, of course.
But Tuesday’s messages from Musk will disconcert the White House as much as GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.