Summary
House Speaker Mike Johnson angered both his Republican caucus and Donald Trump by negotiating a bipartisan budget deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown.
Trump, feeling “blindsided” and “furious,” reportedly encouraged Elon Musk to attack House leadership on X, leading to over 100 posts that derailed the deal temporarily.
While the budget ultimately passed with Democratic support, far-right Republicans were left fuming.
The incident highlights tensions within GOP leadership and Trump’s use of Musk to wield influence over congressional negotiations.
His hand looks so small in that picture.
I bet Elons hands are bigger than Trumps hands.
And with the foreshortening it should seem overly large. Trump’s baby hands crack me up
aww they’re writing stories now to try to refute the “President Musk” narrative. Too bad the facts on the ground don’t match the “Trump told Musk to attack” malarkey. It’s absolutely clear that Musk is in charge and Trump just followed along with “yeah what he said!”
a “king” and his clown.
Does trump smear musks shit on his face?
Cartoon logic tells me he was inspecting the rocket engines when they went off.
By rocket engines you mean musks rear exhaust.
I only see 2 clowns.
One of them has more facepaint than the other, but I’m still not sure which is which.
Bonus points if you guess which is which.
Like I don’t know how Musk has any sway in Congress? He’s a an unelected civilian. Why wouldn’t you just ignore his yapping? What is he going to do? What power could he truly possibly have besides having a Tesla run you over? Like I’d love to be an elected official and deal with that chode. I’m the most stubborn man in the world.
In one of Bernie Sander’s response video in regards to the shutdown, he said that Musk threatened to withdraw support from Republicans who would vote for the proposed budget.
Money is power in politics, and the politicians are greedy for more of it. The billionaire class is the one paying for the politicians’ salary. Ours is only a drop in the ocean for them.
Makes sense. Leave it to Bernie to give us the info.
He can fund a challenger.
What if the spectre of an army of Elon-backed challengers is what it takes to finally motivate campaign finance reform?
I love your optimism and wish I shared in it.
It’s nice to think accelerationism will work this time.
I also think that humans tend to destroy themselves before improving. It’s part of learning after all, not just for individuals but also for society. Peace and progress tend to be born from chaos, when people make mistakes and then learn from it. But I don’t agree with the accelerationism of accelerating the growing chaos just to get on with it. I mean, there is no growing from nuclear war and climate change.
Well, if nuclear war happens, I hope it’s not destructive enough to wipe out all life on earth. And that the utopia that may come from it, as imagined in Star Trek, is what will happen for humanity.
“Money is Speech, unless it’s funding my opponent” seems very appropriate for today’s Republican party.
Not sure why this is still a hard concept to grab, elections are always bought
True.
That’s his power and looks like that’s how he can make Congress do what he wants including confirming his cabinet.
The bottom line as always: “Money, dear boy.”
Elon publicly said if you don’t do what he says, he will spend millions to make sure you lose the next election.
He has a couple million fascist followers who reread The Turner Diaries every other week and can’t cum unless they’re fantasizing about The Day Of The Rope so that’s one thing.
That is brilliant
The rich just get influence. It comes with the money.
He controls a propaganda machine that’s popular with an increasingly wide array of their constituents, and he’s personally popular with those same people. The only real thing an elected representative cares about is not being elected again, and musk is a threat of that to some elected representatives.
Money talks.
Trump isn’t president yet. But still it’s a good sign that he can’t just use bully tactics to get what he wants.
He has no negotiation skills. No real political capital. And he’s despised by most of the leaders who support him only transactionally. His only trick will be lies and threats and Elon’s propaganda site. So maybe he won’t be able to do as much damage as we feared.
But what do I know. I thought he’d be in jail by now.
But what do I know. I thought he’d be in jail by now.
That’s what you get for having faith in what is an obviously broken system. I’m in my forties and it’s been broken since before I was born. Honestly, I get sick of people circlejerking the “founding fathers” because their constitution sucks shit. It was a broken system from the get-go, built to represent just rich land-owning white men. Literally this country was founded on “I’m rich and I hate being taxed, that’s for the poors.” Did anyone with a brain ever expect it to turn out any other way?
I was in court recently and a lady was crying her eyes out, saying calling the cops was a mistake, because her partner was having a mental breakdown, and now her partner has charges, is in jail, and she is about to be evicted from her home because her partner was paying the bills.
The prosecuting attorney leaps to the microphone to make a statement “I want to make clear that calling the cops is never a mistake.” He literally is flat out ignoring what actually happened and ignoring this woman’s feelings and just saying to her face “if you called them, no matter how bad it went, it wasn’t a mistake.” That’s the reality, is a lot of the people in this fucked up broken fucking system are perfectly fine with how it works and think it’s great that it all works this way. They are fine with ruining people’s lives as long as those people are powerless to fight it.
Laws are only for the poors. What fucking fantasy world have you been living in?
The ol’ legal system vs the justice system. We only got one that’s working as intended.
He’s a fucking incompetent loser and he’s way more incoherent now than he was 8 years ago. He’s still very dangerous but there is a chance he just won’t be able to get things done.
Whiner in chief. What a fucking joke of a person he is.
It’s Shakespearian. The protagonist now has everything they said they wanted, and will proceed to ruin everything for everyone.
I love seeing musk used as the wedge (and cudgel) that’s breaking apart the Republican Party.
People said the same thing about Trump in 2017.
The fascists will fall in line and lick the boot, that’s what they do, it’s why they are the way that they are.
