Elon Musk left his job wreaking havoc on the federal government last week, but he still has thoughts about what his former boss is up to: Namely, he believes Donald Trump’s spending bill is a “disgusting abomination.” And he doesn’t care who knows it!
Taking a break from denying using ketamine, Adderall, psychedelic mushrooms, and other substances during his stint in politics, Musk took to X to tell his 220 million followers: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. 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.” Musk’s comments follow remarks he made in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning in which he said he was “disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both.” Obviously, his Tuesday afternoon post represents a slight escalation in criticism.
Democrats have unsurprisingly taken the opportunity to highlight Musk’s anger with the bill. On X, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote: “The GOP Tax Scam is a disgusting abomination. Truer words have never been spoken.” Of course, Jeffries and Musk have very different reasons for thinking the legislation is an abomination. Jeffries doesn’t like it because, among other things, it makes cuts to Medicaid that will cause millions of people to lose health insurance and leave many millions hungry as a result of cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—all to give tax breaks to the richest people in the country. Musk doesn’t like it because he thinks the bill doesn’t cut enough (and, perhaps, because it scraps the Biden administration’s electric vehicle tax credits.)
Asked about Musk’s Tuesday remarks, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters “The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big beautiful bill.”
Other lawmakers have also spoken out against the legislation. Senator Rand Paul warned on Tuesday, “Once this bill votes, and this debt ceiling goes through, the debt is owned by the GOP, and there is no more campaigning and saying ‘this is the Democrats.’ It will be owned by the Republicans, and I think that’s a huge mistake.”
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Of course, Paul’s warning is probably only partially true: Yes, the debt will be Republicans’ fault but that will in no way stop the GOP from blaming everything that goes wrong in the country on Democrats. Many of them are probably workshopping 2026 stump speeches right now pinning whatever the deficit swells to on Joe Biden.
