CROSSPOST: Josh Marshall: State of Play on Capitol Hill

As of December 20, 2024 14:00 EST: Elon Musk as chief chaos monkey, with Donald Trump & Mike Johnson struggling to play catch-up…

As of December 20, 2024 14:00 EST: Elon Musk as chief chaos monkey, with Donald Trump & Mike Johnson struggling to play catch-up…

The Republican Party descends even further into surrealism as Elon Musk tells lies to try to shut down the government, rather than tell usk to get with the team Donald Trump adds demands that Speaker Mike Johnson take immediate actions for which he does not have and cannot get the votes. The endgame? The bill that eventually passed got more support from Democrats than Republicans and the endorsement of the Biden administration, while not including Donald Trump’s single “MUST!” demand…

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• Marshall, Josh. 2024. "State of Play on Capitol Hill." Talking Points Memo, December 20, 2024. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/state-of-play-on-capitol-hill/sharetoken/6fa8dde7-d7e2-44f2-a149-d78a722e0da5>.

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I admit I’ve been saying mostly the same thing in my last few posts on events on Capitol Hill. I must think that if I keep writing it it will finally be clear. Oh well. I just noticed someone say they were surprised that almost 40 House Republicans defied not only Trump but Elon Musk as well.

I don’t think that’s what happened. Was Musk for this Trump/Johnson clean up effort that went down to defeat last night? That doesn’t seem clear at all. It’s way over-literal, over-determined. He wasn’t really for it or against it. He blew the deal up and then just moved on to something else.

Here’s the chain of events I see.

Trump wanted congressional Republicans to arrange for him a smooth path to January 20th, and actually a bit past January 20th. (He didn’t want high-stakes crisis stuff waiting for him on day one.) And they did that. That was the plan. Then Elon Musk barged in and blew the whole thing up. Precisely why he did this or whether there was a particular reason isn’t even totally clear. Maybe it was just impulse or a desire to show who was calling the shots. Next, Trump and Johnson were forced to cobble together a clean-up plan because the government is about to run out of funds and shut down before Christmas. They did that and Trump demanded House Republicans vote for it. He was more explicit than he normally has to be about the repercussions for anyone who defied him. And then 38 of them defied him. And now the whole thing is dead in the water.

Did those 38 defy Elon Musk? I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem like he stated any real preference one way or another. He just blew things up and left.

In a way it’s very Trumpy. Musk’s the chaos agent. But it’s his chaos. Everyone has to react to him. Including Donald Trump.

Again, why did Musk do this? David Dayen at the Prospect says it’s because he wants to protect his factories in China. Maybe that’s true. I have no idea. But the more salient fact in my mind isn’t so much why Musk did it as that he did it and that he could do it. He’s calling the shots. It’s not clear to me that he’s doing it in a particularly linear way. He may be like Rahad Jackson, the Alfred Molina character walking around with the gun in his underwear in that classic scene from Boogie Nights. But he’s got the gun and he’s calling the shots.

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December 19, 2024 20:49 EST: Musk Shows Trump That He’s the New Chaos in Town: ‘If you haven’t seen the details, the meltdown on Capitol Hill went from bad to worse this evening. Or awesome to awesomer, depending on your perspective. Let’s review. Donald Trump wanted a smooth ride to January 20th. He allowed the leaders of the congressional GOP to negotiate a government funding extension to smooth that ride. That was about to pass before Elon Musk stepped in with a tweet storm and blew up the whole thing. That sent Speaker Johnson and Trump back to the drawing board to come up with a new GOP-only plan to meet Musk’s objections. To get it through today it needed a 2/3rds vote in the House. It didn’t come close to 50%. For the next ten days or so the Senate is controlled by the Democrats. So the House isn’t even the only problem. Trump told House Republicans today they had to vote for this new plan. Then 38 House Republicans voted against. Now they’re barreling toward a government shutdown.

Some in the Beltway press still think that everything is great for Trump. Most see this as a pretty bad development for Trump. He ordered the House GOP to vote for this hastily improvised bill and dozens voted against it. That’s not a good sign for an incoming President in his honeymoon period.

But this misses the real point. This wasn’t Trump’s bill. This was Trump and Johnson’s attempt to clean up the mess Musk created when he tanked their bill. I stick by what I said yesterday: The real story here is that Trump has lost control of the process at what should be his moment of maximum power. As far as I can tell Musk himself didn’t even express an opinion on the vote for the clean up. He’s off to something else. Or he was only there for blowing things up. Putting them back together is someone else’s problem. He left that to Trump and Johnson.

Musk’s superpower here is that he doens’t give a crap. He’s not worried about the midterms or his 2028 reelect. He’s only on hand for the fun.

As I noted yesterday, yes, Trump loves chaos. But his chaos, not someone else’s. His chaos keeps him the center of the action. It forces everyone back on their heels and to be reacting to him. But here Trump is being forced to react to Musk’s chaos. That’s very different.

Trump’s weathered a lot. It’s not like he’s done for. They’ll eventually figure something out. But the new dynamic here is what’s really important. Trump allowed Musk into the center of power and now Musk is the one calling the shots.

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December 18, 2024 22:43 EST: Trump’s Trump: ‘As you’ve likely seen, things kind of went off the rails on Capitol Hill. Speaker Mike Johnson had assembled one of those big spending packages to avoid a government shutdown. Then Elon Musk went off on the bill and started a stampede for the exits among House Republicans. Then Trump turned against it too. Then JD Vance. By the end of the day, it was clear not only that the bill was dead, there was a real question about whether Johnson’s speakership will survive the vote for speaker coming up on January 3rd.

But none of those points are the critical ones. This is about Elon Musk.

Trump has brought Musk into the central circle of power. He’s not only de facto vice president. When was the last time you saw JD Vance? He’s practically co-president. Musk is erratic, volatile, impulsive, mercurial. He introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control. See it clearly: Musk did this. Trump thrives on chaos, but his chaos. Not someone else’s chaos.

Trump is following. He’s trying to pretend otherwise but he’s following. And unlike all of Trump’s other bad hires or hires he gets tired of, he can’t just shitcan Musk. Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He’s got a bigger megaphone. And he’s got his own brand. I’m pretty sure there will eventually be a really big and really ugly falling out between the two of them. But it will take a while to get there and the costs are potentially quite large for both of them.

Trump has sewn himself into a sack with Elon Musk, a few billion dollars, a cat and a snake, and had the sack tossed into the Tiber. That’s the story here. And it will go on for a while.

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