Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been acting as though he’s in charge of the U.S. government instead of President-elect Donald Trump, according to Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes in The Atlantic. What’s more surprising, Sykes wrote, is that many MAGA Republicans seem to be going along with Musk’s influence.
The situation unfolded after Musk single-handedly derailed a bipartisan government funding deal by threatening Republicans with primary challenges. He pressured them to remove several key provisions, including deepfake AI regulations and funding for children’s cancer research. However, a faction of Republicans revolted, claiming the bill didn’t cut enough, ultimately killing it anyway.
Sykes observed, “After Musk issued his primary threats on his X platform, panic ensued among the notoriously skittish congressional GOP, who quickly bowed to their master’s voice. Musk, of course, is not actually the president-elect. He received approximately zero percent of the votes in last month’s election.
But for a few hours this week, Musk didn’t just act as if he, and not Donald Trump, will soon hold the reins of government power; the GOP also responded as if he will.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), whose position is already precarious due to the GOP’s razor-thin majority, seemed to recognize that Musk was the real power broker.
Sykes noted that Johnson spent much of the week trying to appease Musk, hoping to avoid the bill’s collapse. “Johnson’s attempt at appeasement failed. Within hours, the pseudo-president-elect had kneecapped Johnson,” Sykes wrote, adding that Musk got both Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance on board with opposing the bill.
Sykes warned that this arrangement could quickly unravel, particularly since Trump dislikes being made to feel like a secondary figure. “The president-elect has to deal with the specter of Elon Musk,” he wrote. “As Politico’s Jonathan Martin noted on X yesterday, Musk’s moment brings with it a few potential downsides for Trump: ‘The Elon risk here is he’s not just diverting attention from Trump, he’s also threatening to deliver him bad press if the gov’t shuts down.'”
Concluding, Sykes wrote, “This week, Musk solidified his influence over the systems of U.S. government, but the clock may be ticking on Trump’s tolerance of that fact.”