Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) mocked President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday night by declaring Elon Musk the real president-elect. The lawmaker theorized that the billionaire owner of X will provide Trump with a “windfall” if Trump does his bidding.
Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla Motors, succeeded in killing a continuing resolution that would have averted a government shutdown this weekend. On Wednesday, he rage-tweeted against the bill before Trump followed suit and urged it to be voted down. In response, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) withdrew it. On Thursday, Johnson introduced a shorter bill that required two-thirds to pass for procedural reasons, but it was rejected despite support from Musk and Trump.
Goldman appeared on All In on MSNBC shortly after the vote.
“Congressman, it occurs to me the Founders – they made their mistakes – but they had one president, I think, for a reason,” host Chris Hayes said. “You’re sort of seeing the problem with the co-president model. If the two co-presidents don’t agree, it’s hard to get anywhere. The two co-presidents elect, I guess. But I can’t actually understand who’s where on what that you can get a path forward.”
Goldman replied:
Let’s clarify one thing: there does appear to be one president. It’s Elon Musk, who has his own very self-interested view of everything, including the fact that he wanted to remove restrictions on investing– U.S. companies investing in China. I wonder why.
So, he has his own interests related solely to his own federal contracts, his own business interests. He has no idea how government operates or how government runs. But he spent nearly $300 million to get Donald Trump elected. There are rumors that he is going to use X to buy or merge with Truth Social, which would give Donald Trump a tremendous windfall.
Elon Musk has Donald Trump in a vise. And it is very clear that Elon Musk is now calling the shots. There’s no way Donald Trump was not aware of what these negotiations were for weeks and weeks and weeks. And the fact that he would just drop in the debt ceiling limit at the 11th hour after… Mike Johnson and the Republicans reached a bipartisan deal is preposterous. But that’s because of Elon Musk. So, we need to face the reality: right now, we have President Elon Musk. And Trump? Maybe he’s vice president, I guess. Vice presidents don’t do much, so that makes sense. He might be the chief of staff. I don’t know what you call him, but he is not calling the shots.
Goldman’s reference to China was likely an allusion to Tesla’s massive factory in Shanghai. Musk has been friendly with the Chinese Communist Party over the years. On the 100th anniversary of the CCP’s founding, he hailed China’s “economic prosperity.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
