Democrats Refuse a Lifeline to House Speaker After Trolling Trump for Late Response to Musk Rallying Cry on Spending Bill

Democrats are reveling in the pain that Speaker Johnson is suffering now that President Trump has killed the House’s bipartisan spending agreement, which the president-elect rejected following an hours-long campaign by billionaire Elon Musk, leading to recriminations that he was following Mr. Musk’s lead.Trump weighed in late Wednesday night to say that he would go after any Republican who voted for a funding deal that extends beyond simply keeping the government open at current levels. The package Mr. Johnson negotiated to get Senate approval includes more than $110 billion in aid for hurricane victims and farmers. Mr. Musk and Trump want that funding stripped. The president-elect’s remarks came after Mr. Musk spent 12 hours railing against the emergency spending agreement that would have kept the government open until mid-March. After Majority Leader Steve Scalise declared the original bill dead, Democratic lawmakers started deriding Trump as the Robin to Mr. Musk’s Batman while also vociferously rejecting any new deal that Mr. Johnson may try to strike. “[Mr. Musk] is president and Trump is now vice president,” Congressman Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said after a Thursday meeting with House Democrats. Mr. McGovern said he was deeply frustrated that Mr. Johnson decided to pull out of the deal, but also seemed to enjoy the chaos that has consumed the speaker and his leadership team before the new Trump administration even begins. “Where I come from, a deal is a deal and your word is your word,” he said. “I wish Speaker Johnson would grow a f—ing spine.”Congresswoman Barbara Lee echoed Mr. McGovern’s barb in an interview with CNN on Thursday morning. “It appears that Elon Musk is trying to take the role as an unelected president and, in fact, that Donald Trump … is following his orders,” Ms. Lee said. “The consequences are grave.”“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this — it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this,” Congressman Dan Goldman said with a smile on MSNBC. “The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden, Donald Trump — chief of staff to Elon Musk — comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”Congressman Mark Pocan took it one step further, using Mr. Musk’s own artificial intelligence image generator Grok to depict Trump as second fiddle to the world’s richest man. Mr. Pocan posted a generated image showing Trump swearing Mr. Musk in as president on January 20, and in another post shared an artificial image of Trump crawling on all fours with a collar around his neck, being led around by Mr. Musk as if he were a dog.But with Trump’s ascendance to the presidency assured on January 20, it is Mr. Johnson’s standing as leader of the chamber that is being tested.The speaker’s tenuous grasp on his job is growing weaker by the hour as members across his conference — including those who are still demanding that disaster aid be included in a final deal and those staunchly opposed to lifting the debt limit — bicker about new proposals.In a previous go-round earlier this year, Democrats saved Mr. Johnson from a motion to vacate after he agreed to a floor vote on a foreign aid bill that shipped weapons and economic aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries responded Thursday that there would not be a repeat of that assist if Mr. Johnson needs Democratic support for a new spending deal.

Democrats Refuse a Lifeline to House Speaker After Trolling Trump for Late Response to Musk Rallying Cry on Spending Bill

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