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The The Wall Street Journal‘s editorship has been spent Donald Trump and Elon Musk over this week’s “budget fiasco” and warned that it represents a “bad omen” for 2025.
President-elect and tech billionaire ally Musk has thrown Congress into chaos when they scuttled President Mike Johnson’s bipartisan deal to prevent a government shutdown.
Another Trump-backed version, which included suspending the debt limit, failed spectacularly on Thursday, giving Musk felt political failure for the first time.
In a scathing op-ed the Journal, whose parent company Dow Jones is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said that Trump “on the advice of Elon Musk blew up a draft budget for the end of the session with no plan to pass another.”
“There are bad omens here for 2025 and the Republicans’ ability to govern,” the committee said. “The immediate result was a fiasco by any measure.”
The bigger concern, the board said, is how Trump and his inner circle will govern when he takes office in January. “These are the days of MAGA euphoria and chest pounding. Sue the journalists. Fire Mike Pompeo because Tucker Carlson says so,” the board said.
The Journal also blamed Musk for not admitting that the Senate and The White House both are currently controlled by Democrats.
“Democrats are not likely to raise the debt limit to make life easier for Mr. Trump, and if they do, they will want something for it,” the committee said.
“This is how Congress works, and for all Mr. Musk’s brilliance, he didn’t get it. He should also be good at math, so he can probably count to 218, the number of votes needed for a majority in the House of Representatives when everyone is present. Remember that.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning, The Senate passed the stopgap bill by an 85-11 vote to resume government funding 38 minutes after it expired at midnight Friday.
The final version removed some provisions that Democrats had argued for Republicans caving in to pressure from an unelected billionaire with no experience in government.
The debacle drew criticism from both sides. Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent pointed out that Republicans will still need bipartisanship in the House in the next Congress.
“We all know that. That’s why there has to be a conversation with the Democrats,” he told CNN. “Because they need Democrats to vote for these things and therefore they’re going to expect something in these bills.”
Dent added that Trump and Musk are on a “collision course.”
“It was Elon Musk who really killed the bipartisan compromise,” he said.
Democrats mocked tech billionaires heavy influence on the incoming administration.
“The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” added Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania. “He decides now.”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanderswrote on X: “Democrats and Republicans have spent months negotiating a bipartisan deal to fund our government. The richest man on Earth, Chairman Elon Musk, doesn’t like it.”