Elon Musk likes to learn on the job, through trial and failure. Sometimes, this process is genuinely impressive: SpaceX’s first three launches all failed, pushing Musk to the verge of bankruptcy – before the company went on to dominate near-earth space. The company now launches more rockets into space each year than every other company and government on the planet combined.
Other efforts were more mixed: when Musk bought Twitter, his desire to cut costs rapidly was so intense that he reportedly unplugged a server that was vital for the site’s efforts to monitor illegal activity on the platform, forcing staff to work frantically to repair the damage.
When he first launched a “robot” at Tesla, it was revealed to be a dancer in a bodysuit. He once offered to build a network of tunnels for Miami, a city that is barely above sea level (meaning the tunnels would flood without huge effort and expense).
However, in the last 48 hours Musk has truly surpassed himself. Congress has until the end of Friday – the stroke of midnight – to come up with a compromise deal that can pass the House and Senate to avoid a full shutdown of the federal government, just days before Christmas.
That means a deal has to be agreeable to the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate (the Republicans will control both houses once the new term begins next year), which is always an arduous process of grinding compromise. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had managed to negotiate such a deal, which was expected to pass on Wednesday.
It would fund the government through to March, including disaster relief funds for the victims of recent hurricanes, almost $200m for child cancer research, restrictions on investment in China, and numerous other measures vital to secure the Democratic votes it needed to pass. Lawmakers were ready to sign it off and go home for Christmas – until Elon Musk stepped in.
From next month, Musk will head up the “Department of Government Efficiency”, which in reality will neither be a government department nor a paid government job. But despite not even having started this role yet, Musk launched a full-scale attack on the compromise deal and threatened any Republican who voted in favour of it.
Having seen the hundreds of millions Musk put into Trump’s campaign and his current closeness to Trump – and fearing the effects of Musk supporting a primary challenger against themselves – House representatives fell into line, rejecting the deal Johnson had agonisingly negotiated.
Very late in the day, Trump repeated Musk’s attacks on the deal, and added a condition of his own: Republicans should also insist on increasing the USA’s debt ceiling (the amount the government is allowed to borrow, to pay its existing spending commitments) by an amazing $5trn, so it wouldn’t have to be broken or raised while he was president.
What followed was, in essence, total chaos. Many Republicans were not willing to vote on such a huge debt increase, while Democrats understandably didn’t want to simply sign off on a bad deal while giving Musk and Trump a huge political win. Johnson held a House vote on the new Musk/Trump deal, and it failed spectacularly: only two Democrats voted in favour of it, and 38 Republicans voted against.
Musk very visibly ordered House Republicans to rip up the done deal that was on the table in favour of something else. When the new proposal he and Trump endorsed fell at the first hurdle – not even getting enough Republican votes to come close to passing – he tried to blame Democrats, but such efforts tend to fail. What he is left with is an absolute mess.
At the time of writing, all of the options look bad for Musk: either no deal is reached and the federal government shuts down, meaning all sorts of essential services and payments stop just days before Christmas; or else the House has to go back to the compromise deal with Democrats that Musk so publicly eviscerated just days before.
Musk is in a no-win situation entirely of his own making, and has handed Trump the first major political crisis of his new presidency before his term has even begun. That crisis could easily cost him personally, too.
Democrats are not just blaming Musk for the chaos, they are calling him “president Musk” and suggesting that Trump and the Republicans are dancing to his tune. If Trump starts to believe that narrative, it will not end well for Musk – no president would play second fiddle to one of their advisers, and Trump’s ego is large even by presidential standards.
Elon Musk went all-in on his first foray into politics, and before he’s even started his “official” role in Trump’s administration. If he doesn’t learn how to play the game better, he may lose his first job in politics before it has started.
