House GOP Fears Trump-Elon Breakup Might Get In ‘Big, Beautiful' Bill's Way

Yahoo

7 hours ago

House Republicans are hoping the public breakup between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk does not last very long for the sake of the 'big, beautiful' reconciliation bill.
Thursday's news cycle was dominated by the clash between the President and the world's richest man and their petty attacks on each other — which included mentions of Jeffrey Epstein, impeachment, black-eye makeup, as well as a back and forth over the contents of the reconciliation package the House recently passed.
The showdown between the two appears to have House Republicans worried that more unwanted attention — pointing to the poison pills in the House package — would be on the reconciliation bill they are calling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As we've been reporting for some time, House Republicans have attempted to disguise their sweeping cuts to the social safety net by referring to the changes as 'reforms' like enacting work requirements for Medicaid, among other things.
'I just hope it resolves quickly, for the sake of the country,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told CNBC Friday morning.
Other House Republicans are also preaching deescalation for the sake of the bill they spent weeks fighting with each other over.
'Both of them have paid a tremendous price personally for this country, and I think at the end of the day, they're both going to put the country first,' Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) said, according to Politico. 'And them working together is certainly far more better for the country.'
Meanwhile, Department of Government Efficiency caucus Chair Aaron Bean (R-FL) said Friday he was 'shocked and dismayed' to see his 'two friends fighting,' adding that he remains optimistic that the former allies can work it out.
'I believe there's a Diet Coke in their future, that they can settle it and cooler heads will prevail,' Bean said. 'We need them together. We need to be united, and we're stronger together. So I'm very optimistic that there will be a happy ending very soon.'
— Emine Yücel
A look into Rep. Nancy Mace's (R-SC) dirty stalling tactics that helped her ultimately block Democrats on the House Oversight Committee from subpoenaing Elon Musk this week — even though not enough Republicans were initially present to override the effort.
Some thoughts on the creator of Succession's new, satirical movie Mountainhead, and what it tells us about our current cultural moment, as the Fox News echo chamber, social media and AI merge to create a society in which reality is elusive.
Let's dig in.
Washington was consumed with drama related to Elon Musk on Thursday afternoon as the megabillionaire who spearheaded the so-called Department of Government Efficiency launched into a public social media spat with President Trump. But turmoil surrounding the President's former ally actually started earlier that morning when tensions over Musk essentially caused the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to short circuit and grind to a halt.
This bizarre scene was a perfect distillation of how Congress is (or depending on your view, isn't) working in the second Trump era, with MAGA partisans going to cartoonish lengths to protect the president and his allies from scrutiny. The episode took place in a hearing that was nominally about the use of artificial intelligence. In his opening remarks, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) noted how Musk, whose DOGE minions have used AI to siphon up federal data and slash government programs, has changed that conversation.
'Optimizing the federal government's use of technology has long been a bipartisan priority of this committee,' Lynch said. 'We cannot sit here, however, and have the traditional bipartisan conversation about federal IT modernization without acknowledging the fact that the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and DOGE are leading technology initiatives that threaten the privacy and security of all Americans and undermine our government and the vital services it provides.'
Following those remarks, Lynch moved to subpoena Musk to appear before the committee. His motion was quickly seconded. After last year's election, Republicans have a majority in the House and its committees. But at the time of Lynch's motion, one Democratic member said only six of the 25 Republicans on Oversight were present. These absences theoretically meant the Democrats had a temporary majority needed to issue the subpoena.
However, this effort to have the committee dedicated to oversight provide some actual oversight of Musk was quickly derailed. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who was serving as chairwoman, almost immediately called to 'suspend' the proceedings. She then presided over a more than twenty minute delay as she strained the bounds of normal procedure to buy time for her colleagues to make their way to the hearing. The extended interlude was filled with surreal scenes as Democratic members attempted to question Mace and move forward with business as usual.
At one point, even though Republicans were evidently outnumbered and outvoted, Mace declared that they had won a voice vote to consider a motion to table Lynch's motion. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) attempted to speak at this point and was shut down.
'I love you,' Mace said to him. 'This is not debatable.'
Mace did not respond to a request for comment.
At another point, as she swatted away Democrats' efforts to hold the vote, Mace seemed to wink. She also called Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) 'babe' when the congresswoman asked to do a roll call 'so we can determine if y'all really have the votes.'
'No ma'am,' Mace replied.
As Democrats began to openly note that Mace's stonewalling appeared to be a fairly unprecedented effort to allow absent Republican members the time to filter in, Mace continually shut down discussion and efforts to hold a vote. One Republican member responded to an inquiry about whether they were following rules by noting that Democrats had lost the last election.
That comment made the situation on Capitol Hill quite plain: After winning the election, Trump and his partisans are willing to throw out any traditional rule book.
After about twenty minutes and twenty seven seconds, Mace allowed the vote to proceed. As she checked the numbers with the clerk, it was apparent the Republicans were still coming up short. Mace then allowed Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who had since slipped in, to vote. With those two final additions and the twenty minute-plus standstill, Republicans were able to table the effort to subpoena Musk by a vote of 21-20.
In a statement to TPM, Lynch accused the GOP members of ' refusing to exercise Congressional authority on behalf of the American people to demand answers and accountability for the destruction, chaos, and cruelty Elon Musk and DOGE have unleashed on our government and on communities nationwide.'
'It is disturbing that Republicans would rather shield the richest man in the world from testifying publicly than fight for the folks who rely on VA health care, Social Security benefits, weather services, humanitarian aid, scientific research, and more vital programs and services that have been decimated by Elon Musk's chainsaw,' Lynch said, adding, 'The Oversight Committee was made for this moment, and Republicans are failing the American people by refusing to do their jobs. Just because Elon Musk has turned in his ID badge does not mean he can walk away from the monstrosity he has created and the permanent damage left in his wake.'
— Hunter Walker
'I call this alternate reality, I call this place where these folks live, Bullshit Mountain,' Jon Stewart told the crowd during The Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium debate with Bill O'Reilly in 2012. 'On Bullshit Mountain,' Stewart went on, 'our problems are amplified and the solutions simplified.'
Bullshit Mountain would become Stewart's enduring metaphor for Fox News in the second half of the Obama presidency. It was a convenient shorthand to explain how Fox pundits could routinely espouse conspiratorial nonsense or fixate on an obscure event with seemingly no broad implications for the American public and use it as proof positive of the country's imminent collapse. Bullshit Mountain was an acknowledgment that the two major political parties didn't merely have different opinions on how to solve the country's problems, but increasingly were living in two different realities with entirely different problems. There was also the non-subtle accusation of cynicism in the name Bullshit Mountain. Maybe the audience believed this crap, but the executives and the anchors knew it was bullshit, right?
In Jesse Armstrong's breakout show, 'Succession,' he satirized a fictional version of the Murdoch empire which took us behind the scenes of Bullshit Mountain. In Armstrong's interpretation of this world, there were the serious people who understood how to play the game and accumulate power, and those who were not serious, who didn't know how to play the game, or worse, didn't know it was a game at all.
In his follow-up to Succession, HBO's new made-for-TV movie Mountainhead, Armstrong seems to acknowledge that Bullshit Mountain may no longer be a place created and controlled by serious people, that the bullshit from which the mountain is made may have broken confinement and swamped us all. Bullshit Mountain may now be where we all live — our dominant reality.
Centered on a foursome of ultrarich tech founders (all men) who gather at a mountain lodge for a poker game as the world falls apart after the release of the AI-powered social network they all had some role in creating, Mountainhead depicts a world where seriousness might be a detriment to world dominance.
'Nothing means anything and everything is funny,' the founder of the AI social network explains when confronted by a litany of abuses enabled by his product, including a video of a kid juggling severed feet.
The technology these founders have created has effectively dissolved any sense of shared reality by allowing anyone to create and propagate alternate realities which leads to the unraveling of the global order. But more interesting than the consequences of this technology, which we are in many ways already aware of, is the way in which the founders have isolated themselves from their own reality, both intentionally and unintentionally.
After about 30 mins of dialogue laced in the idiomatic gibberish of Silicon Valley … 'first principles' .. 'post-human'… 'decel' … 'p(doom)' … 'game theory' … 'chunky numbers' … you realize these characters have nothing meaningful to say to each other, whether socially or in response to the global catastrophe they helped create. While there is a tinge of the tragic in their inability to communicate emotionally with each other, there is also something powerful in the artifice of their language, which protects them from having to meaningfully take responsibility for their actions.
Viewing the potential collapse of the world through their screens, a vantage point from which nothing can be known for certain, the artificiality of their language lends an artificiality to the events, regardless of whether or not they are really happening. The collapse of a country's economy gets referred to as 'de minimis,' news of the mayor of Paris's assassination becomes an example of the 'compound distillation effect of the content.' But when the four characters end up bunkered in the basement, erroneously fearing retaliation from Iran's Revolutionary Guard, it's clear that they are as susceptible to the fake reality their technology has created as any of its users.
Whether you find Mountainhead successful satire may depend on your priors. However, in the wake of DOGE, Elon's takeover and remaking of Twitter and the enthusiasm with which our major AI companies are cheerleading a new cold war with China, it's hardly a work of speculative fiction.
In Jon Stewart's farewell speech from the Daily Show in 2015, he claimed that the bullshitters were getting lazy and that vigilance was our best defense. But his framing assumed a continued dichotomy between the bullshitters and the bullshited. He didn't offer any advice on what to do when there's no longer a difference.
— Derick Dirmaier