Elon Musk, “a guy who’s never received a single vote, who is constitutionally ineligible to serve as actual president, who polling shows isn’t wanted there by the American people” is now “effectively running the United States,” Chris Hayes said Wednesday night, and “the American people are paying zero attention to this.”
Musk has essentially “bought himself control” over the country, Hayes began. “Apparently, he spent $44 billion to turn Twitter into his personal propaganda outfit and promote Donald Trump, and then he went on to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to help get Trump elected.”
Tuesday night House Republicans laid out a short-term plan to avoid an end-of-the-year government shutdown. That plan was rejected by Trump and JD Vance Wednesday, hours after Musk himself rejected the plan the night before (and he continued to rail against it throughout the following day).
Congressional Republicans “apparently forgot to ask Elon Musk” about the bill before doing their job and passing it, Hayes continued. “I don’t think Musk has any idea what is actually in the bill. In fact, I feel quite certain that he urged his followers to use AI to summarize it for him, but he still spent the day whipping votes against it to his hundreds of millions of followers on the social media platform he owns.”
“He tweeted more than 70 times against the deal to keep the government open,” Hayes added. It was only then that Trump and Vance interjected their own stance about the deal, and the end result is that “House Republicans certainly who they are taking their marching orders from” — the aforementioned “guy who’s never received a single vote.”
Not to be outdone by himself, it appears Musk’s preference is the government is shut down until Trump is sworn in Jan. 20, Hayes later said. After an X account by the name of @WallStreetMav wrote, “Just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days,” on the platform, Musk shared the original message and added a simple, “YES.”
