Who solutions to who? Fox News calls for Speaker Johnson defend spending invoice to Elon Musk | EUROtoday

House Speaker Mike Johnson discovered himself cornered stay on Fox and Friends on Wednesday morning when he was confronted with Elon Musk’s declaration on X that his new congressional spending invoice “should not pass.”

The Republican chief was invited onto the Fox News’ breakfast present to debate the bipartisan deal struck on Tuesday night for a stop-gap invoice to fund the federal authorities by means of to March 14. It consists of $100 billion for catastrophe aid and assist for farmers among the many many provisions outlined throughout its 1,547 pages.

But Musk – the Big Tech mogul and Trump ally who has grow to be an influential voice within the president-elect’s ear in latest months and now heads the newly-formed advisory Department of Government Efficiency – has already expressed his disapproval of the invoice, albeit with out going into element, writing bluntly on his social media platform: “This bill should not pass.”

After introducing a compilation of clips exhibiting members of Johnson’s personal caucus on Capitol Hill griping in regards to the invoice as “unserious” and referring to it as a “dumpster fire,” Fox co-host Steve Doocy put it to his visitor that each Republicans and Democrats are sad with him and that their discontent might hurt his probabilities of re-election to the speakership within the new yr.

Before Johnson might reply, Doocy continued: “But, you know, and this is breaking news. You do not know. You know who also does not like this? Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, just tweeted: ‘This bill should not pass.’

“The only way you’re going to be able to pass it now, Mr Speaker, is with Democrats. If you could, what’s your message to Elon Musk?”

Recovering after being blindsided by the query, Johnson replied: “Well, I was communicating with Elon last night.

“Elon, Vivek Ramaswamy and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this. And Vivek and I talked last night until about almost midnight. And he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ And he said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’

The speaker continued: “Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans. So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said, ‘It’s not directed at you, Mr Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ And I said, ‘Guess what fellas? I don’t either.’

“We’ve got to get this done because, here’s the key, by doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in, roaring back, with the America First agenda.

“That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3, when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again wrench control and all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we have been wanting to do for the last couple of years.”

Johnson concluded: “Right now, Democrats still control the fence, and that’s the problem. So we’ve got to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown.

“So we get the short-term funding measure and we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending.

“That’s when the big changes start and we can’t wait to get there.”

The disagreement between Johnson and Musk exposes what might show to be a risky fault line between two key Trump allies, with one in search of to seek out consensus in Congress and negotiate departmental budgets and the opposite in search of to trim the fats and slash and burn “excessive” spending wherever he finds it.

It additionally begs the query of who solutions to who and whose priorities might be given choice by the brand new president as soon as he enters the Oval Office.