Republican Congressman Hits Musk Over False Claims: ‘What He Said Was Not True’
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) hit back at Elon Musk after the billionaire tanked a spending bill by making several false claims about it.
Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to elect President-elect Donald Trump, has played an outsized role in Washington before Trump has even taken office. In the waning days of 2024, the Tesla CEO fired off a series of tweets against a bipartisan bill to keep the government funded through March. Some of Musk’s broadsides were patently false, including a claim that the bill paid for “bioweapons labs.”
Trump followed Musk’s lead and opposed the bill. Ultimately, the House and Senate passed a skinnier piece of legislation that no longer contained a provision about “outbound investment,” which would have required Musk and his companies to be more transparent about their overseas business dealings – including in China, where Tesla has a large factory in Shanghai. Musk did not mention this provision in the dozens of tweets he sent regarding the legislation.
On Thursday, Bacon appeared on NewsNation to discuss the upcoming speakership vote in the new Congress and Musk’s influence on the government. The billionaire was appointed by Trump to co-chair an advisory commission of sorts called the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Its acronym, DOGE, is a nod to a nearly worthless cryptocurrency Musk has promoted.
“I’ve been primaried three times,” said Bacon, who was elected to the House in 2016. “I think there’s some real threats. But, by the way, what he said was not true… So, for example, Elon Musk put out that we were gonna give ourselves a $66,000 pay raise. That was not true. That we’re protecting Liz Cheney. That was not true. That we were gonna build a new football stadium in Washington, D.C. That was not true. So, a lot of things he said [were] not true.”
Despite the criticism, Bacon said he is hopeful Musk’s efforts with “DOGE” will help reduce government waste.
Watch above via NewsNation.
