Elon Musk's online war with Republicans leaves Donald Trump to wonder if he's created a monster

RNZ News

a day ago

By
Brad Ryan,
ABC in Washington
Elon Musk has left his position at DOGE, but remains a political player.
Photo:
AFP / Allison Robbert
Analysis
-The anger is taking many forms on Elon Musk's X account.
Multiple graphs illustrating the growing national debt.
A meme showing a microscopic pair of scissors with the words: "Republicans getting ready to reduce the size of government."
Even a sword-wielding Uma Thurman from the movie Kill Bill. (Geddit?)
It all represents a stunning
tburst over Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill"
just days after
Musk's departure
from his
government cost-cutting gig
.
But the tweet that Musk has chosen to pin to the top of his feed might be the one that most troubles Trump.
It's a repost of another X user's collection of reader comments from the Fox News website. It shows a lot of support for Musk among the network's MAGA-loving audience.
https://t.co/RrOtAdXQP5
One article has attracted almost 8000 comments at time of writing, and it takes a lot of scrolling to find many that don't back Musk. A lot of them purport to be from Trump supporters who have taken Musk's side of this argument.
It's by no means a perfect poll, but it could give Trump pause for thought.
Musk's anger doesn't just manifest in tweets.
His time as Trump's "first buddy" earned him a massive MAGA following.
He now has sizeable influence over the Americans that Trump needs most: the Republican voters who didn't just put him back into power, but also handed him vital, and vulnerable, Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.
Musk justified his controversial work at DOGE with arguments about the need to bring down the national debt.
He often pointed to the fact the US pays more interest on its debt than it spends on defence.
But he lamented that he couldn't do more to deal with it.
DOGE's cruelling and culling of government jobs and departments achieved about $US180 billion in savings, according to its own estimates.
That would equate to 9 percent of his early target of $US2 trillion. And those numbers are rubbery and widely viewed with scepticism.
Outside fact-checks of DOGE's online "wall of receipts" resulted in reductions to its posted savings claims, and there are disputes over others that remain uncorrected.
And a lot of the cuts could still be reversed by the courts, shrinking the savings figure further.
Musk insists DOGE's ongoing work, in his absence, means the savings figure will continue to grow.
But he recently argued that DOGE was an advisory board rather than "the dictators of the government", so the savings achieved were "proportionate to the support we get from Congress, and from the executive branch of the government in general".
Now Congress - at the behest of the executive, i.e. Trump - is considering legislating spending and tax cuts which would undermine all those money-saving efforts.
The most recent analysis, from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, found the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would increase budget deficits by $US2.4 trillion over the next decade.
It would also increase the debt ceiling, allowing the US to borrow trillions of dollars more than it currently can.
Elon Musk in the Oval Office with his son X Æ A-Xii as President Donald Trump signs executive orders in March 2025.
Photo:
AFP / Jim Watson
Trump's support for the bill - which is full of all sorts of MAGA priorities - has been absolute.
He's described it as "arguably the most significant piece of legislation that will ever be signed in the history of our country".
His demand that Republicans support it means some apparently did without even reading it.
Hard-right Republican and hardcore Trump fan Marjorie Taylor Greene admitted she didn't know what was in it when she voted for it, and voiced regret after discovering it would curb states' power to regulate AI.
"Full transparency," she said, "I did not know about this section … I would have voted NO."
Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years.
I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in…
pic.twitter.com/bip3hztSGq
Some of Trump's Republican foot soldiers have been running the line that Musk's anger is just business. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested it was all about the bill's termination of tax breaks for buyers of electric vehicles.
But the angry noise on Musk's X platform has so far not been matched on Trump's Truth Social.
At time of writing, he's limited his online response to a somewhat cryptic repost of Musk's tweet announcing his departure from DOGE.
He knows a public brawl with Musk is what Democrats have been dreaming about.
But he also knows all about the power of money in politics.
Musk, the world's richest man, sank hundreds of millions of dollars into getting Trump re-elected.
He's threatened in the past to fund challengers to sitting Republicans, including from within the party, if they displease him.
He recently said he was looking to rein in his political spending, but added: "If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it."
The midterm elections are only 18 months away.
All members of the House of Representatives, and a third of the Senate, will face an election battle.
Trump wants not only to retain the slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate but also to make sure those Republicans are cooperative with his MAGA agenda.
Musk's been pumping up those who aren't - retweeting Republicans who are voting against the Big Beautiful Bill.
He could now see a reason to restart political spending, and try to get more of them into Congress and in Trump's way.
And even if he doesn't dig into his billions, the Musk-Trump bromance helped build Musk's influence in the MAGA world. It's something Trump may come to regret.
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ABC