The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has eviscerated Donald Trump and Elon Musk over this week’s “budget fiasco” and warned it spells “bad omens” for 2025.
The president-elect and tech billionaire ally Musk threw Congress into chaos when they toppled Speaker Mike Johnson’s bipartisan deal to avert a government shutdown.
A second Trump-backed version, which included a suspension of the debt limit, failed spectacularly on Thursday, giving Musk his first taste of political failure.
In a scathing op-ed the Journal, whose parent company Dow Jones is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said that Trump “on the advice of Elon Musk blew up the end-of-session budget bill without a plan for getting another one passed.”
“There are bad omens here for 2025 and the ability of Republicans to govern,” the board said. “The immediate result has been a fiasco by any measure.”
A greater concern, the board said, is how Trump and his inner circle will govern when he takes office in January. “These are the days of MAGA euphoria and chest-beating. Sue the press. Banish Mike Pompeo because Tucker Carlson says so,” the board said.
The Journal also laid into Musk for failing to recognize that the Senate and White House are both currently controlled by the Democrats.
“Democrats aren’t likely to raise the debt limit to make life easier for Mr. Trump, and if they do, they will want something for it,” the board said.
“This is how Congress works, and for all Mr. Musk’s brilliance, he hasn’t figured that out. He’s also supposed to be a math whiz, so he can probably count to 218, the votes needed for a House majority when everyone is present. Memorize it.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning, the Senate passed the stop-gap bill by an 85-11 vote to continue government funding 38 minutes after it expired at midnight on Friday.
The final version stripped out some provisions championed by the Democrats, who accused the Republicans of caving in to pressure from an unelected billionaire with no experience in government.
The debacle has prompted criticism from both parties. Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent pointed out that Republicans will still need bipartisanship in the House in the next Congress.
“We all know this. That’s why there have to be conversations with the Democrats,” he told CNN. “Because they need the Democrats to vote for these things and therefore they’re going to expect things in these bills.”
Dent added that Trump and Musk are on a “collision course.”
“It was Elon Musk who really tanked the bipartisan compromise,” he said.
Democrats have mocked the tech billionaire’s heavy-handed influence over the incoming administration.
“The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania added. “He’s now calling the shots.”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanderswrote on X: “Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government. The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it.”
