Elon Musk has ramped up his scorched earth MAGA war over Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” urging Americans to pressure members of Congress to kill the mega-spending plan.
In his latest social media tirade since he broke ranks with Trump over the bill on Tuesday, the former “First Buddy” escalated his war of words, telling his 220 million-plus followers on X: “Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.”
The billionaire entrepreneur later posted an image of actress Uma Thurman from the 2003 cult classic Kill Bill.
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The posts came after the Congressional Budget Office found that the Trump-backed bill would add $2.4 trillion to federal budget deficits over 10 years.
While Trump’s allies have publicly and privately expressed frustrations over Musk’s attack, the president himself has so far refused to hit back at his biggest campaign donor.
But Trump added a new plot twist of his own to negotiations on Wednesday by declaring that the debt limit should be “entirely scrapped to prevent an economic catastrophe.”
“It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Let’s get together, Republican and Democrat, and DO THIS!”
Musk and Trump’s latest comments come as Republicans scramble to pass a bill that would raise, rather than scrap, the cap on the federal government’s borrowing authority.
And while the GOP supports extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, they remain divided over what else to include and how to pay for it.
The whopping cost of the package estimated by the Congressional Budget Office has added even greater uncertainty to the bill’s path in the Senate, where several GOP members, including Kentucky Republicans Thomas Massie and Rand Paul, have already sided with Musk.
On Wednesday, Senator Ron Johnson also told CNBC’s Squawk Box that he could not vote for the bill in its current form, calling it “grotesque” and “immoral.”
Johnson backs splitting the bill into two separate parts. But that proposal has been rejected by Trump, who is urging the GOP to pass his agenda in “one big, beautiful bill” using the reconciliation process.
Musk’s dramatic shift in tone this week came after a tumultuous few months in which he upended the federal bureaucracy, watched his Tesla stocks plummet, and ultimately failed to deliver the $1 trillion in savings he claimed DOGE would achieve.
But while Musk has been privately frustrated by Congress for some time, his new all-in approach, complete with a threat to make some pay at next year’s midterm elections, has rocked Republicans.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that he was “surprised” by Musk’s actions, but added: “I think he’s flat wrong.”
