By Nick Catoggio
Thursday, December 19, 2024
You either die a hero or live long enough to see House
Republicans threatened with primary challenges if they don’t vote to
raise the debt ceiling.
That’s how that line goes, isn’t it?
In broad outline, the collapse
on Wednesday of Speaker Mike Johnson’s bill to fund the government before it
shuts down this weekend is a familiar story. Republicans have a tiny majority
so they need to stick together to pass anything; they can’t stick together on
spending bills because die-hard fiscal hawks like Thomas Massie and Chip Roy
won’t go along; Johnson then has to beg Democrats for votes, forcing him to
make policy concessions that infuriate the right.
Usually the story ends with the bill passing and populist
Republicans firing off fundraising emails about being sold out again by “the
uniparty.” Then everyone moves on until it’s time for another spending bill,
when the cycle repeats.
That’s almost how it happened this time. As usual,
the GOP couldn’t unite so Johnson had to wheel and deal with Democratic leader
Hakeem Jeffries. In this case the concessions
included $100 billion for disaster relief, $10 billion in economic aid to
farmers, a land grant for a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., and even
a modest pay raise for members of Congress. (After one of the most
dysfunctional sessions in U.S. history!) It was a so-called “Christmas tree”
just in time for the holidays. Fiscal conservatives were aghast when the text
was released, but House members are eager to head home. Had Johnson put the
bill on the floor quickly, he might have gotten to 218.
Instead he waited. Then Elon weighed in.
The second-most influential figure in the GOP lashed the
spending bill in more
than 100 posts on his social media platform on Wednesday, calling it
“criminal” and declaring that anyone who votes for it deserves to be ousted
in the next election. He lied
egregiously about it in so doing, as tends to happen when populist
demagogues are on the attack. Contra Musk, the bill wouldn’t raise
congressional pay by 40 percent, wouldn’t force taxpayers to pay for the
stadium in D.C., wouldn’t shield the January 6 Committee from investigation,
and wouldn’t fund, er, “bioweapon labs.”
No matter. His 200 million followers on Twitter
responded. Within hours, House Republican offices were getting an earful from
constituents.
Later in the day, the most influential figure in the GOP
spoke up. In a series of statements,
after weeks of silence on the matter and with the shutdown deadline bearing
down, Donald Trump declared that he, too, opposed the bill—chiefly because it
contained no provision for raising the debt ceiling. Congress wasn’t expected
to do any ceiling-raising until next summer, mind you, but “we’d rather do it
on Biden’s watch,” Trump bluntly declared.
He went as far as to say that any Republican who votes for a “clean” funding
bill that doesn’t hike the debt ceiling should
be primaried, a complete perversion of the Tea Party ethos that drove
right-wing populism when he entered politics in 2015.
Then, on Thursday morning, he told NBC
News that Republicans should get rid of the debt ceiling altogether.
Congrats to the many Reaganites who voted for a big-spending nationalist last
month on the occasion of him muscling conservatives to forfeit what little
leverage they still have over controlling the federal budget.
President Trump and Speaker Musk got their way. Johnson’s
bill was pronounced
dead on Wednesday evening. With less than 36 hours until the government
shuts down as I write this on Thursday, House Republicans are scrambling to
build support for their
Plan B. Stay tuned—but it’s not going well so far.
We learned during Trump’s first term that a government
run by the Joker can function, sort of, at least if he’s surrounded by a
competent Cabinet. What does a government run by two Jokers look like, though?
Especially when their interests don’t align?
Out-Trumped.
If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time since Trump
took over the party that some other populist has managed to impose his will on
it.
There’s nothing new about the House and Senate GOP
hurriedly blowing up a bill on Trump’s say-so that was headed for passage. That
was the story of
the 2018 shutdown and the border
security legislation that Sen. James Lankford offered earlier this year.
What’s new is having them blow it up on Elon Musk’s say-so.
And it was, almost certainly, Musk rather than Trump who
detonated Johnson’s bill, despite the fact that the two Jokers ended up holding
the same position. “We’re told that Trump’s team was aware of the contours of
the deal and did not object,” Politico
reported on Thursday. “And we’re also told Republicans passed off the details
of the deal to those close with Trump.”
Trump’s team is doing their best today to save face,
suggesting to Axios
that Musk’s demagoguery was part of a novel strategy to inundate House
Republicans with “instant and overwhelming feedback” on legislation. But that’s
nonsense, obviously: Trump has been offering “instant and overwhelming
feedback” on social media since the day he became a presidential candidate nine
years ago.
What really happened here, in all probability, is exactly
what it looks like. Musk wanted to flex his populist muscle by inciting a
grassroots rebellion against Johnson’s bill, and he succeeded so spectacularly
that even Donald Trump was caught off-guard and feared ending up on the
wrong side of it. It wasn’t just congressional Republicans this time who were
politically intimidated into abandoning a bill they supported. It was Trump
himself.
The obsequiousness that some GOP members of Congress
showed Musk as he pushed them around was also striking, as that sort of thing
is typically reserved for the cult leader. “My phone was ringing off the hook.
The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk,” crowed
Rep. Andy Barr. After Musk replied to a Twitter follower who blamed Rep.
Dan Crenshaw for the congressional pay raise in the bill, Crenshaw corrected
him—while carefully prefacing his response with “I love you Elon.”
Sen. Rand Paul proposed formally replacing Johnson with
Musk, reminding followers that the speaker needn’t be a member of the
House.
Never before in the Trump era has another populist
commanded the political and financial capital needed to credibly threaten
Republican politicians into doing his bidding. This is entirely new.
Knowing how fragile Trump’s ego is, Democrats relished
the opportunity to needle him about being usurped by his ally. References to
“President Musk,” “President-elect Musk,” and “Shadow President Musk” circulated
on Twitter. Rep. Dan Goldman earned points for creativity by describing
Trump as Musk’s “chief of staff.” AI images popped up of Musk pulling the strings
of a Trump puppet and leading Trump around
by a dog leash.
The two Jokers who now rule America are both narcissists
of historic proportions. They can’t share a spotlight comfortably forever, so
eventually they won’t. We can only wonder what will happen if President Trump
declares at some point that cutting more spending or deporting more illegal
immigrants or adding new tariffs is infeasible—only to have Speaker Musk accuse
him of “selling out” and call upon The People to apply pressure.
For the first time, there’s a possibility that Trump will
be out-Trumped.
Conflicting interests.
There was something else unusual in seeing Musk lead a
populist uprising against the House bill. Uncharacteristically, Trump is the
more sober political actor in this case.
His demand to eliminate the debt ceiling may have come
belatedly, but it’s not unreasonable. For 15 years, fiscal hawks have been
threatening not to raise the ceiling without meaningful spending cuts in return
but have never followed through, knowing that doing so might crash America’s
creditworthiness. Repealing a statutory mechanism that ideologues regularly use
to take the Treasury hostage while achieving nothing, needlessly spooking
markets in the process, is sensible policy.
And yes, it is ironic that a man who’s held
the Republican Party hostage for nearly a decade would find himself so
opposed to hostage-taking.
But Trump’s interest in ending the debt ceiling isn’t
actually belated. Per Politico,
he’d been leaning on Johnson since the election to deal with it now so that it
doesn’t bedevil him next summer when he’s president. He backed off, it seems,
once he realized there was little the speaker could do to make it happen. The
House Freedom Caucus wouldn’t have gone along (some of them have never voted to raise
the debt ceiling), which would have forced Johnson once again to make
concessions to Democrats to get it done. Democrats would have wanted a lot in
return, and the more they got, the more Republican votes Johnson would have
risked losing.
Trump understood, it appears, that it was better for the
House GOP to pass a bad spending bill than to force a shutdown that would leave
the party with few ways out. After all, if the government shutters, Democrats
will have no reason to bail Republicans out by supplying votes for Johnson’s
next spending proposal. They had a deal with him on the current bill, on which
he’s now reneged, and they’re about to lose control of Congress and the White
House. There’s no incentive for them to ensure that the government is running
smoothly when Trump takes office.
Democrats are happy to let a shutdown happen and force
Republicans to somehow find the votes to end it when they take over the Senate
on January 3. And that’ll be easier said than done thanks to the recalcitrance
of the Massies and Roys on the one hand and the reality of a Senate Democratic
filibuster on the other.
By biting his tongue about the bill for weeks, Trump was
bowing to that political reality—until Wednesday night, when Musk boxed him in
by tanking the legislation. Once it was going down anyway, there was no longer
any point in restraining himself about the debt ceiling.
For once, his behavior is understandable. But what about
Elon’s? What was his motive in blowing up the House deal?
Ostensibly it was about spending. He’s the co-chair of DOGE, isn’t he? In theory, flogging the House GOP
over a minor short-term funding bill like this one was him firing a shot across
their bow, showing what awaits them politically if they don’t get serious about
budget-balancing next year. Musk is supposed to be a “disruptor” in his new
position. Well, he disrupted.
I don’t think that’s primarily what he was up to, though.
I think he was on a power trip. He’s gained an enormous amount of cultural
influence over the right in a short period of time, far more than prominent
officeholders like J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis. He was probably curious to see
what he could do with it. Could he actually blow up important federal
legislation with a tweetstorm, a feat only Trump himself has managed in the
past?
He could. Tanking the bill was Elon’s show of political
force to congressional Republicans, a warning that they serve two masters now.
If it were simply about spending, he wouldn’t have posted so manically about it
or thrown his weight around so aggressively by threatening supporters with
electoral retaliation. (He can afford
to make good on those threats, needless to say.) And he certainly wouldn’t
have been so sloppy about attacking the legislation for things it doesn’t
actually do or say.
His tenure as grand poobah of Twitter has been an endless
horror show about an immensely powerful man getting sucked ever deeper into
red-pilled online culture and hopelessly addicted to populist validation. On
Wednesday he went on the sort of demagogic bender about a Republican spending
bill that anyone who’s followed right-wing social media “influencers” since
2010 is very familiar with—except, in this case, the influencer in question
commands a following so large and ardent that he can move Congress itself with
tweets. Only one other person in America can say the same.
Trump wanted the government up and running, Elon didn’t
care. Trump was fine with the deal Johnson made with Democrats, Elon wasn’t.
The two Jokers’ interests conflicted. Elon won. Interesting, as Musk might
say.
A Democratic opportunity.
The story of the year in politics is that Democrats have
“lost touch” with the working class. They urgently need to rebuild their
populist bona fides before Republicans lock down the blue-collar vote for a
generation.
An opportunity has now been gift-wrapped for them. If
they can’t get a bit of traction from this episode, they’re so hopeless that
the party should disband.
Elon Musk isn’t any ol’ Trump crony, of course. He’s the
richest person who’s ever lived. His net worth is approaching half a
trillion dollars. His fortune has grown so vast that by some estimates it
exceeds Jeff Bezos’ and Mark Zuckerberg’s combined.
And if you had to bet on which of those three will fare best financially during
Trump’s second term, you’d bet on Elon, of course. He’s the one who’ll be a
major player in government for the next four years, well-positioned to push
policies that stand to benefit his companies.
The richest person in history is the same guy who’s
trying to browbeat Congress into shutting down over the holidays, knowing that
will mean some government workers missing paychecks, disaster relief being held
up, and potentially the entire economy slowing down. Musk isn’t
hiding his callousness about it either: When some fans tweeted at him that
they’re hoping for a shutdown, he responded
enthusiastically.
Even for a free-marketeer like me, the spectacle of a guy
worth $450 billion egging on federal dysfunction because he’s jonesing on all
the “likes” and “retweets” it’s bringing him is grotesque. It has the air of a
prank. When you have so much money that you’re bored with the perquisites of
extreme wealth, you might amuse yourself by throwing your country’s government
into needless chaos without a care for how doing so will affect the average
Joe.
That’s next-level Gilded Age decadence. Thomas Nast would
need a wall-sized canvas, not a newspaper page, to capture the magnitude of it.
Some Democrats have noticed. After Johnson’s bill
crumpled under pressure from Musk, Rep. Jamie
Raskin complained of “an oligarchy—a handful of wealthy people run
everything and everyone is supposed to live in fear of them.” Sen. Bernie Sanders wondered
whether his Republican colleagues would kiss the ring of “the richest man on
Earth, President Elon Musk” and warned that billionaires must not be allowed to
control the government.
Billionaires do
control it, though. And the more they use their influence to shaft the
working stiffs that Trump supposedly worries about, the easier it should be for
Democrats to get another look from downscale voters whom they’ve alienated.
But who knows? The absurdity of history’s richest man
becoming a populist hero on par with Trump doesn’t bode well for the American
people’s ability to be roused against oligarchy. And Democrats haven’t been
great so far at convincing the public to oppose government by Joker: They
barely beat Trump in 2020 and failed miserably in 2024, when they had a coup
plot and dozens of criminal charges to use against him.
At this stage of American decline, the public might
actually prefer to be ruled by two Jokers rather than one.
If nothing else, though, the next four years will have
moments of real amusement as the two try and fail to coexist and critics taunt
Trump relentlessly about “Shadow President Musk.” (His spokesman has already
felt obliged to issue a statement about
it.) The fact that congressmen are having angry arguments
online with “Catturd” is a nice mood-setter for what’s to come. Trump’s
first term resembled the first Joker movie inasmuch as it was menacing
and more or less functional. With Elon aboard, his second one might resemble
the sequel—an unholy, comically embarrassing mess.
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