Tech billionaire Elon Musk is already acting like he's in charge of America rather than President-elect Donald Trump, wrote Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes for The Atlantic — and incredibly, MAGA Republicans seem to be going along with it.
This comes after Musk blew up a bipartisan government funding deal, using the threat of a primary challenge to force Republicans to strip out tons of programs from the deal including new deepfake AI regulations and funding for children's cancer research — only for a faction of Republicans to revolt against the bill for not cutting enough and killing it anyway.
After Musk issued his primary threats on his X platform, wrote Sykes, "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."
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), already in jeopardy of retaining the speakership due to the GOP's razor-thin majority, understood Musk was the one he had to butter up, wrote Sykes, and spent much of the week trying to persuade him not to tank the bill.
"Johnson’s attempt at appeasement failed. Within hours, the pseudo president-elect had kneecapped Johnson," getting Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance on board with opposition to the bill, Sykes said.
It's an arrangement that is not stable, and could fall apart before long, noted Sykes — particularly since Trump hates it when his supposed allies make him feel like he's taking a backseat.
"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.'"
"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," Sykes concluded.
