Elon Musk Really Does Not Understand What’s Going on Here

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As the Senate began its work Tuesday on Republicans’ One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, former special government employee Elon Musk dropped a bomb.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk, who supposedly was moving on from politics, posted on the social media platform he owns. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

He followed up with a post warning: “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

Word spread quickly. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has criticized the bill for not cutting spending deeply enough, told reporters that Republican senators were murmuring about it and showing it to each other on their phones during their regular closed-door Tuesday lunch. Johnson’s likeminded spending-hawk compatriots, such as Rand Paul and Mike Lee, saw Musk’s screed as a boost in their efforts to give the bill more teeth. The Democratic opposition was similarly ecstatic; it took milliseconds for Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to appear before a camera holding a posterboard of Musk’s printed-out posts.

Musk, by Wednesday, was directly calling on his followers to call their members and senators to “KILL the BILL.”

As a matter of gossip, the long-prophesied Musk-Trump split over Trump’s legislative agenda was irresistible to all. Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison told NOTUS that “it’s like mommy and daddy are fighting.” Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told me he wondered how long it would be until we got a Trump post calling Musk a druggie. (Trump, so far, hasn’t said a word about Musk’s crusade.)

Among those, meanwhile, who were not having a good time: Mike Johnson. The House speaker told CNN on Tuesday that he’d just had a good conversation with Musk the previous day about the bill, and so the sudden U-turn came as both “surprising” and “very disappointing.” Johnson, in as polite a way as he could say it, suggested that Musk’s reasons were business-related, given how the OBBBA repeals electric vehicle and clean-energy subsidies.

“I know that the [electric vehicle] mandate is very important to him,” he told CNN. “I know that has an effect on his business and I lament that.” When asked whether he thought that was a motivation behind Musk’s sudden trashing of the bill, Johnson said he would let “others draw their own conclusions about that.”

It’s undoubtedly exciting to have this new layer of drama inserted into the OBBBA saga. But Musk’s sneak attack ultimately reinforces why it’s a relief that he’s no longer directly involved in government, and why he should continue to be pushed as far away as possible.

There’s much to criticize in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, from either the left or the right. Musk, who’s never understood how the Article 1 branch works or why it needs to be consulted, criticizes it from a head-scratching perspective.

His criticism of it as “pork-filled” is an especially unusual angle of approach. “Pork” is a catchall word used to describe wasteful spending often doled out to special interest groups. It is often, incorrectly, used interchangeably with “earmark,” a process through which members of Congress directly steer funding for projects in their districts. It’s a vapid term that vapid people use when they’re angry that money is being spent on something they don’t like, so it’s unsurprising that Musk would be taken with it.

But “pork” is not the issue with the bill. In dollars and cents, the bill (per Wednesday’s fresh new Congressional Budget Office estimates) cuts taxes to the tune of $3.7 trillion over 10 years and cuts spending $1.3 trillion, increasing the deficit by $2.4 trillion. The biggest spending measures in the bill are defense upgrades and a massive boost for border security and internal immigration enforcement—things Musk should like, given how vocal he was during the campaign about how a “flood of illegals is crushing the country!” The roughly $150 billion in fresh defense spending over the coming years is certainly the most ripe for criticizing as “pork.” But it’s also only incidental to the cost of the bill, and more than outweighed by cuts to long-term mandatory spending programs. The bill is not really a “spending bill,” as Musk describes it, as most of that is dealt with in annual appropriations bills.

What are the problems with the bill? From the right, it’s that the bill doesn’t cut enough: It doesn’t restructure Medicaid from its open-ended, matching rate model, it doesn’t eliminate enough clean-energy incentives, and so on. From the left, it’s that it’s absurd to cut food and health care funding for poor people without asking for even a scintilla of sacrifice from the well-off. Democrats and the far right can agree it’s a “disgusting abomination,” but it’s not really a pork issue.

If Musk is crying “pork” for the same reason most people do—to try to kill a bill they dislike for any old reason—then why does he want to kill it? There’s been some reporting to back up Johnson’s speculation that the loss of electric vehicle tax credits has consumed Musk. Axios reported that “behind the scenes, sources say, Musk also advocated for the measure in the legislation, but to no avail.” And last week, Musk lamented on X that “there is no change to tax incentives for oil & gas, just EV/solar.” If Musk didn’t recognize when he hitched his career, reputation, and public image to Trump last year that the Grand Old Party would target clean energy while protecting oil and gas, then he is beyond help.

Even if you support electric vehicle tax incentives, it’s a problem that a guy who doesn’t really understand what’s going on has this much power. It’s a problem that because of his net worth and lack of filter, he can get in a momentary snit, burp out an angry post, and send Washington scurrying.

Musk’s fundamental unseriousness, though, may limit the extent of the scurrying. Republican senators didn’t seem scared of Musk’s post or its follow-up threat; they have more than enough political cover from Trump. When a reporter asked North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis on Tuesday afternoon whether Musk’s tweets would have any impact on how they work through the legislation in the Senate, Tillis answered before the end of the question: “No.”

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