Musk turns on Republicans - and gives Trump's big bill a harder path
For 130 days, tech billionaire Elon Musk was a "special government employee" working inside the Trump administration to slash what he said were wasteful government programmes and bloated departments.
Now, after his exit last week, he is back on the outside. And it is the Trump administration – and the massive spending legislation the president is currently pushing – that is drawing the ire of this new, seemingly unshackled Musk.
In a series of social media posts on Tuesday, he took aim at Trump's signature tax and spending bill that is being considered by the Senate after House Republicans passed it last month. After saying he couldn't "stand it anymore", Musk called the bill a "disgusting abomination".
"Shame on those who voted for it," he said. "You know you did wrong."
And on Wednesday afternoon he went a step further, calling on voters to contact their representatives in Congress to voice their opposition. "Bankrupting America is not OK!" he wrote on X. "KILL the BILL."
Musk's diatribe against the Trump-backed bill, which includes huge tax breaks and more investment in defence, comes after he spent months pushing for cuts to government spending.
In his posts, he said the legislation would add to the US budget deficit and saddle Americans with debt. He also warned Republicans who supported, or are planning to support, the bill that "we [will] fire all the politicians who betrayed the American people" in next year's midterm elections.
And it is that line that could be the most concerning for Republicans.
In the House, all but three Republican members backed the bill, which passed by a single vote over unified Democratic opposition.
If Musk turns on the majority of Republicans - after spending hundreds of millions to support their campaigns last year - it could cause headaches for incumbents worried about facing challenges in party primaries and represent a devastating blow to Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress for the second half of Trump's second term.
Although Musk had offered more measured criticism in an interview last week, this week marks a stark change from the chummy meeting he had with Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, where he stood, smiling, as Trump expounded on the importance of what he said will be his defining legislative achievement.
The president has yet to respond to Musk, but he is sure to be asked about the comments. So far, however, the White House has been handling the situation delicately.
According to US media reports, the White House is attempting to explain Musk's vocal opposition as a response to the bill's cuts to green energy subsidies, including tax credits for electric vehicles like Musk's Tesla cars.
Axios, meanwhile, reported that another source of tension is Trump's decision to pull the nomination of Jared Isaacman – a Musk ally – to be head of the US space agency Nasa.
In the halls of Congress on Wednesday, established Trump allies were treading a similarly careful path.
"The bill can be made better, but it's not an abomination," Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading figure within the Republican Party and loyal backer of Trump, told the BBC.
"Let's pass this bill," he said. "We can make additional cuts to spending as necessary, but I want to put some points on the board. Get the tax cuts, make them permanent, get money, do the border. But [Musk] is right, we should cut more."
Speaker Mike Johnson, meanwhile, reportedly spent time pushing back on Musk's criticism of the bill in a closed-door meeting with Republicans. He also tried to reassure members over the billionaire's threats to oust supporters of the bill, according to Politico.
On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump "already knows" Musk's view on the legislation. "This is one big, beautiful bill, and he's sticking to it," she added.
Trump may be standing by the legislation, but his task of convincing Senate Republicans to sign off on it will only be more difficult in the face of Musk's opposition.
His criticism could encourage Republican budget hardliners in the Senate who were already expressing concern about how Trump's bill will spike the federal deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade.
Several, including Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have said they cannot vote for the House legislation unless it undergoes significant changes. Musk has been amplifying a steady stream of posts by Paul and Lee on X, including one article headlined "It's Rand Paul and Elon Musk vs Donald Trump".
If those hardliners have their way and get new spending cuts to popular social programmes, however, centrist Republicans like Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine are likely to revolt.
That matters because, assuming unified Democratic opposition in the US Senate, Republicans can only afford to lose three of the 53 Republicans if they want Trump's bill to pass.
Murkowski would not be drawn on the potential impact of Musk's comments on Wednesday, but she told the BBC he is "an influencer out there, and his words have impact".
Liberated from the constraints of his quasi-governmental job, Musk has tossed a powder keg into all these delicate deliberations to bring the disparate Republican factions into some kind of agreement – and it is not the first time. His criticism sank a government spending bill last year, creating problems it took months for Republicans to solve.
Trump has said he wants the legislation on his desk to sign by the Fourth of July congressional recess. That could prove to be a tall task, but it is one that has a pressing deadline behind it.
His "big, beautiful bill" contains a $4tn increase in the US debt-limit borrowing authority. Treasury department officials say that if that limit is not increased by sometime in August, the nation would face the unprecedented prospect of defaulting on its national debt.
Musk's noisy opposition has rested, in part, on his warning that the growing US debt is becoming unsustainable. But if his criticism derails the current efforts to pass the bill in Congress, he could speed up that day of financial reckoning.
With additional reporting from Brandon Drenon on Capitol Hill
Follow the twists and turns of Trump's second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher's weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.
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