Tech billionaire Elon Musk appears to have sent a quiet but loud message to House Speaker Mike Johnson — right after the world’s richest man publicly slammed President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” as a “disgusting abomination.”
Johnson, who muscled the GOP’s multitrillion-dollar budget bill through a narrow majority in the House, responded to Musk’s sharp critique in front of reporters on Wednesday.
“Well, I’ll tell you I called Elon last night, and he didn’t answer,” Johnson said. “But I hope to talk to him today.”
“It’s not – you know, he’s very friendly, and we’ve laughed about our differences on policy before,” he added.
Johnson said that he and Trump “obviously” talked about the criticism, and that the president is “not delighted that Elon did a 180.”
“Look, I don’t know what happened in 24 hours,” Johnson said. “Everybody could draw their own conclusions about that, OK. But I look forward to talking to my friend about it again, and I’m not upset about it.”
In a post on X on Tuesday, Musk wrote that he “can’t stand it anymore” as he lashed out at the over 1,000-page spending bill, which has already moved to the Senate, and would extend tax cuts, increase spending for the border and military, and reduce funding for government programs including Medicaid.
“This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” he wrote. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Musk had also launched more critiques since then, particularly related to predictions that the spending bill would increase the federal deficit, which sits at over $36 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday announced in a new estimate that the package would add $2.4 trillion to the deficit, and Johnson previously told CBS News that a $4 to $5 trillion range is “about the right estimate.”
“It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt,” Musk posted on Tuesday.
In another, he wrote that “Congress is making America bankrupt.”
“This immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery!” he also wrote on Wednesday, while reposting other criticism from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who have both faced threats from Trump for publicly opposing the package.
But Musk’s barrage of posts over the past day haven’t been the first time that the he has bashed the bill, creating a rift between him and Trump, who has framed the legislation as key to his agenda. Last week, Musk told “CBS Sunday Morning” that it “undermines” the mission of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he formerly led to slash government spending.
“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk said during the interview.
Although Musk ended his time in the Trump administration last Friday, he has appeared to already have been distancing himself from national politics in recent weeks, as he continued to face backlash over his role at DOGE. His stock price for his electric vehicle company, Tesla, had plummeted in the first quarter as sales decreased. He also announced that he would pull back on political spending, after backing then-2024 candidate Trump with an estimated $250 million.