Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has embarked on a new political crusade. After officially leaving the Government last week, staging a friendly farewell alongside Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Musk has become obsessed with thwarting the president's major fiscal bet. A stab in the back to the White House economic team, a huge mistake, according to the Republican majority leader in Congress, but above all a gigantic problem.
In his first term, Trump approved a tax cut for the country's highest earners. This year, those taxes should return to their previous levels, unless the cuts are extended as part of a broader tax reform, a project that the president, in his unique style, has dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill. The issue is that evaluative bodies like the Congressional Budget Office estimate that it will wildly increase the public deficit and debt and leave 10 million people without healthcare. Musk has decided to lead the rebellion to prevent the Senate from adopting it. "Call your senator, Call your congressman, Breaking the United States is NOT okay! WE MUST KILL THE BILL," he urged his millions of followers today.
After all kinds of lobbying, pressure, and threats (political from the White House, even physical from the most radical MAGA circles), the House of Representatives approved the 'Big Beautiful Bill' by just one vote difference, 215 to 214. While Trump is now repeating the strategy, going one by one to Republican senators to secure the necessary support, he has encountered two serious obstacles. The first one is Senator Rand Paul, son of the legendary liberal congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian opposed to public spending who not only will not vote in favor but is trying in every way to prevent the approval of this 'Beautiful Bill', as he did with tariffs. "There are four of us who think this way," he says about his conservative colleagues who could vote against the bill's processing.
The second, unexpected, is Musk, who has allied with Paul. If last week he said he was "disappointed" by "the huge spending bill that increases the budget deficit, not reduces it, and undermines the work being done by the DOGE team," and on Tuesday said it was a "disgusting abomination," yesterday he stated that it represents "slavery" for future generations. "Interest payments already consume 25% of all government revenues. If massive deficit spending continues, there will only be money to pay interest and nothing else. No social security, no health insurance, no defense... nothing," he wrote in one of the dozens of messages posted in the last hours.
Musk and Paul boast of their alliance in public, trying to undermine the president's efforts to secure the 51 votes needed in an Upper House where Republicans hold the majority. Musk has even joined a campaign that says a law should be passed that no congressman or senator could run for re-election if the deficit exceeds 3% of GDP. "If the bill focused solely on making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, I would say yes emphatically. Unfortunately, that is not the reality with this bill. It includes the largest increase in the debt ceiling in history and will force the United States to borrow five trillion dollars in the next two years. This bill is the opposite of conservative, and we should not approve it," denounced Senator Paul, who has become Trump's main opponent right now.
"He loves voting 'NO' on everything, thinks it's good politics, but it's not," Trump wrote about the senator on his social media. "He never has practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are really crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can't stand him. This is a GREAT GROWTH BILL!"
Trump has so far avoided getting into the clash, but his "friend" and until recently special advisor, is playing with fire. On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt downplayed the impact of Musk's statements at her daily press briefing: "The president knows Elon Musk's stance on this bill. This does not change his opinion. The president's opinion is that this is a big and beautiful bill, and he supports it." But more and more government advisors and members of Congress are pushing back against the billionaire, saying he is wrong, does not understand how the law works, or criticizing the sources he uses to claim that the deficit will soar by over two trillion dollars and the debt by five trillion more.
In the MAGA movement and the media most aligned with Trump, they are torn. On one hand, Musk's criticisms resonate among the Republican electorate, formally always in favor of a small state but accustomed to supporting conservative governments that systematically increase debt. Networks like Fox, the one the president watches all the time, are trying to avoid the issue as much as possible to prevent a collision. But others like Steve Bannon, alt-right guru, who has always distrusted Musk, are very upset.
Bannon criticized Musk's work this morning at the Department of Government Efficiency, claiming he had completely failed to uncover the fraud he had promised, trillions of dollars, in the federal government. "In Social Security and Medicaid, show me where the fraud is," he shouted on his WarRoom podcast. "Show me where the DOGE fraud is. I haven't seen anything in Social Security... nor in Medicaid, nor in the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense is a festering sore of waste, fraud, and abuse. Show me the money," he urged.