For those who don’t spend their Sunday mornings glued to the television — and their Sunday afternoons attempting to dig through a week’s worth of network and cable news media spin — The Daily Wire has compiled a short summary of what you may have missed.
As politicians head home from Capitol Hill for Christmas — with less than one month to go before President-elect Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office and assumes the presidency for the second time — the talking points have clearly been issued. Everyone, from members of Congress to pundits to the hosts of ABC’s “The View,” is complaining about billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and whether or not his influence on the incoming Trump administration is outsized.
Much of the conversation centered around the recent fight over a last-minute deal on a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown just before members of Congress left for the Christmas holiday, and the fact that Musk — along with Trump and a host of others — had taken to X to pan the 1,500-plus page deal originally supported by House Speaker Mike Johnson. That deal fell through, in part due to widespread exposure of what it actually included, forcing lawmakers to try again.
There were several obvious lessons that could be learned from this particular situation — chief among them that Congress could have reached a deal long before the previous one had expired, thus eliminating the need for an 11th-hour stopgap measure entirely. They also could have learned that if such a situation was truly unavoidable, the people might appreciate the transparency of a clean bill that only addressed the truly emergent funding needs.
According to most Democrats — and even a handful of Republicans — the only thing worth learning from that scenario was that Elon Musk, because he owns the social media platform X and has Trump’s ear, must necessarily have too much influence over the policies that will shape the incoming administration.
From ABC’s “The View” to the House floor, courtesy of Whoopi Goldberg and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) respectively, came the too-clever-by-half labeling of the SpaceX CEO: “President Musk.”
That tone continued into the Sunday morning political shows as both the hosts and their guests reacted to the question of Musk’s influence — and whether or not Trump was happy about it.
On ABC’s “This Week,” former Governor Chris Christie argued that Trump might be fine with Musk having a bit of the spotlight for the time being, but insisted that was likely a temporary scenario — and that if Musk overstepped or Trump needed to blame someone else for something, the bloom would quickly come off the rose.
Christie began by suggesting that Musk was “intoxicated” by the adoration that came with being in Trump’s orbit and that at least for the moment, the entrepreneur had a lot of influence. “I used to say this to General Kelly when he first became chief of staff,” Christie continued. “Today you’re trading at 100 cents on the dollar. You will trade to zero, the only question is how long will it take.”
Christie did not put a timeframe on how long he thought Musk might last, but instead described how he believed it would happen, saying that Musk would likely be pushed aside “when Trump believes that something has gone wrong and he needs someone to blame — and Musk becomes the person to blame.”
After spending deal chaos sparks scrutiny of the Trump-Musk dynamic, former GOP Gov. Chris Christie says Musk’s influence will end “when Trump believes that something has gone wrong and he needs someone to blame — and Musk becomes the person to blame.” https://t.co/zmltd1MLQj pic.twitter.com/WhQTdSWYY0
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 22, 2024
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Rep. Tony Gonzales defended the relationship between Trump and Musk, saying he was like a “prime minister” in the recent battle over funding — but that in that role, he had amplified the concerns being voiced by regular Americans.
“We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker — it feels like — as if Elon Musk is our prime minister,” Gonzales said, and while he conceded host Margaret Brennan’s point that he was obviously “unelected,” he argued that much of what Musk had done was shine a light on all of the unnecessary and wasteful things that had been included in the first funding package. “He has a voice, and a large part — a lot of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people.”
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) on “Face The Nation” compared Elon Musk to an unelected prime minister after the Tesla CEO got involved in a tumultuous funding fight on Capitol Hill that previewed dynamics under a GOP-controlled Washington. https://t.co/E9eGZpe4Nz
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 22, 2024
Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) pushed back on the prevailing narrative on CNN’s “State of the Union,” telling host Dana Bash that it was clear to him that although Musk continued to work in an advisory capacity, Trump was still the one holding all the marbles.
After first explaining that the contents of the funding bill had been made largely available to the general public because Elon Musk had bought Twitter (now X), Hagerty said that social media-enforced transparency had forced lawmakers to face direct feedback from their constituents. That, he said, was what had ultimately led them to a cleaner CR.
“I think President Trump is clearly the leader,” Hagerty said when challenged directly, saying that he’d met with both Trump and Musk together and had no concerns that the SpaceX CEO was elbowing his way into undue influence of the incoming president.
“I think President Trump is clearly the leader.”@SenatorHagerty dismisses the suggestion by Democrats that Elon Musk, not Donald Trump, is calling the shots in the Republican Party. pic.twitter.com/B0fnKLTwve
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 22, 2024
Later on the show, Republican pundit Scott Jennings mocked the Democrats for complaining about the “unelected” and “billionaires” steering Trump on policy, noting that even the mainstream press was finally waking up to the fact that President Joe Biden had not been the one calling the shots in the current administration.
“I hear Democrats criticizing the idea that we have unelected people with too much influence over the government,” Jennings said, in reference to the myriad claims that Musk was controlling the outcome of the recent government shutdown-averting continuing resolution.
“I invite them to pick up the Wall Street Journal from this week and find out that unelected people have been running the government for the last four years,” he said. The article he mentioned laid out concerns — voiced by officials from within Biden’s White House — that Biden was not capable of even hosting long meetings, mush less large unscripted events, without fears of a major slip. Others had weighed in on his decision to seek a second term in office, saying that they were unsure how he would have the capacity to finish out his current term, much less embark upon another.
“I hear Democrats criticizing the influence of billionaires on our politics, when you’ve got this Soros punk running around collecting Democrat politicians like my kids collect Pokemon cards,” he said. “I think all of the criticism of Musk coming from the left is totally hypocritical, totally over the top, and he is doing something interesting: bringing some transparency to the federal government, it’s not a terrible thing.”
Trump himself addressed the media narrative from the stage at Turning Point USA’s America Fest in Phoenix, Arizona, saying that he had no concerns about Musk usurping the office. “No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “You know why he can’t be [president]? He wasn’t born in this country. But the fake news knows that.”
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