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 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.
