When President-elect Donald J. Trump picked “the Great Elon Musk,” the world’s richest man, to slash government spending and waste, he mused that the effort might be “the Manhattan Project of our time.”
On Wednesday, that prediction looked spot on. Wielding the social media platform he purchased for $44 billion in 2022, Mr. Musk detonated a rhetorical nuclear bomb in the middle of government shutdown negotiations on Capitol Hill.
In more than 150 separate posts on X, Mr. Musk demanded that Republicans back away from a bipartisan spending deal that was meant to avoid a government shutdown over Christmas. He vowed political retribution against anyone voting for the sprawling bill backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Mr. Musk reposted Republican lawmakers’ complaints about the spending measure, celebrating each as a win. He also shared misinformation about the bill, including false claims that it contained new aid for Ukraine or $3 billion in funds for a new stadium in Washington.
By the end of the day, Mr. Trump issued a statement of his own, calling the bill “a betrayal of our country.”
It was a remarkable day for Mr. Musk, who has never been elected to public office but now appears to be the largest megaphone for the man about to retake the Oval Office. Larger, in fact, than Mr. Trump himself, whose own vaunted social media presence is dwarfed by that of Mr. Musk.
The president-elect counts 96.2 million followers on X and has 8.3 million on Truth Social, his own platform. Combined, that is less than half of Mr. Musk’s 207.9 million followers on X. (Mr. Musk is also far richer than Mr. Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $442 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)
On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump sought to reclaim control of the political debate for himself, issuing a threat of sorts to Mr. Johnson that he must not give in to Democrats as he tries find a way to keep the government operating without incurring the wrath of Mr. Musk.
“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital.
But left unclear was whether Mr. Musk is a loose cannon pursuing his own agenda or the tool that Mr. Trump envisioned to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy when he appointed him to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who has long railed about the undeserved power of wealthy business executives, appeared to have reached his own conclusion, sarcastically referring to Mr. Musk, the owner of X and Tesla, as the president.
“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” Mr. Sanders wrote — on X, of course. “The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”
One of Mr. Musk’s first posts about the spending bill came at 4:15 Wednesday morning in Washington.
“This bill should not pass,” the billionaire wrote on his social platform.
Between posts about his own video game antics and SpaceX’s satellite internet service, he used his X account to call the bill “criminal,” spread misinformation about its contents and issue a rallying cry to “stop the steal of your tax dollars!”
His posts followed a similar pattern of past activity on X, where he can become hyper-fixated on a single issue that bothers him. As the most popular user on X, Mr. Musk has used his feed as a bullhorn to drive conversation on the platform and beyond.
Wednesday, however, was the first time Mr. Musk has been able to use his website as a digital whip, driving lawmakers to support his desired outcome. By the afternoon, House representatives and senators — some of whom had already voiced their disapproval of the bill before Mr. Musk’s outbursts — were posting on X about their “no” votes and echoing Mr. Musk’s calls to curb spending and support the efficiency effort.
“Any Member who claims to support the @DOGE should not support this “CR of Inefficiency” that does not have offsets!!,” Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina, wrote on X, using shorthand for a continuing resolution to keep federal funding flowing. “Don’t get weak in the knees before we even get started!”
On Wednesday, narrative eclipsed truth. “The terrible bill is dead,” Mr. Musk posted just before 4 p.m. in Washington, closing his post with the Latin phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” which translates to “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”
He’s used the refrain before, most notably when restoring Mr. Trump’s Twitter account in November 2022, shortly after buying the company. This time, the man who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars this election cycle to support Mr. Trump’s campaign used it to frame his own actions as the will of American citizens.
“No bills should be passed Congress until Jan. 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office,” Mr. Musk wrote on X. “None. Zero.”
The post Elon Musk Flexes His Political Strength as Government Shutdown Looms appeared first on New York Times.
