Bulwark Takes - Elon Disses Trump's Big Beautiful Bill

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer react to Elon Musk dissing the GOP's big spending bill.

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Just add a packet of Meowgreens. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bullwork. I'm here with Will Summer, who is the author our Falsalack Newsletter, which you should be subscribing to. We are doing this late night Tuesday. It's like almost 950. Thanks to Sebastian, our producer for doing this, editing this late at night. But we had some really interesting video that just popped by.

Elon Musk taking a big dump on the big beautiful bill, which is not something you normally see from a top White House advisor regarding the president's most important piece of domestic legislation. We're going to get into that. But before we do subscribe to the feed, we appreciate it. All right, well, let me set it up for you. And then you just sort of take a swing at it. Elon, who is kind of like in his, I don't know, last chapter of this version of politics, is doing a few interviews as he gets more involved or back involved, I should say, in SpaceX and his other private ventures. And he's pretty open about how bitter he feels about how Doge went and how upset

he is with the end product, which itself is notable because that was such an important administration initiative. But then he was asked about Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill, which is a sort of grouping of tax cut extensions, Medicaid and snap cuts and other Republican domestic parties. This is like literally the only bill that Republicans are working on. They stuffed it all together. It just passed the house.

The house sent it to the Senate. They're trying to build momentum for this thing. And then Elon Musk says this to CBS Sunday morning. So, you know, I was like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it. And it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along, I mean like

everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. 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. Okay. What do you make of it? I mean he's really... he's trash again. It's kind of crazy. As you said, I mean, these comments are coming as Republican senators are starting, starting

to complain about the bill saying, oh, it's too much money. Right. We're putting too much of a hole in the deficit. And then Elon comes out and says, yeah, yeah, totally worthless. You know, I mean, it is interesting to think about all the kind of like the the drama around Doge, Elon is going to save the government with big balls and the gang and all this like risk, they're they're scouring Washington. And then the Republicans in this bill just say, all right, we're going to fund most of all this stuff back again. I mean, as you can see,

saying, you know, what was even the point? Why did I give up all that all my stock price for this? Right. But there's also like a way to do this. That I mean, I actually appreciate it because it's just, you know, being like, fuck it. I'm going to like put, you know, the chips will fall where they may. But it's like, if you think about it, like he's arguably the most important White House aid or was at some point in time to then go out publicly. He knows what he's doing.

Like he could just say, look, they're working it out and I hope they move it in a better direction. Even that would have been bad, but like to say this thing doesn't actually reduce the deficit and I'm disappointed in it. It's like, it's, it's unheard of, it's unheard of to have a top board has official dues. Now, of course the laws of politics don't really apply to Trump. And this kind of reminds me of how Elon was out there on the HP one

visas and just, or HB1 visas and just, or H1B visas and just being like, you know, I want these and anyone who doesn't want these can go to hell. Um, and so maybe this doesn't matter materially, but you're right. Like they are trying to sell, uh, this bill to a skeptical Republican Senate. And one of the talking points is that it funds everything that president Trump wants to do. Yeah, I mean, you know, another example, I think about when Trump had a big business event for AI in the White House, and it was all these this money commitment.

And then Elon says, you know, some rival AI company said you basically that guy's lying to Trump, you know, he can't get this money that you know, he said the money wasn't actually real. They like put up like 500 or said they were going to put a 500 billion. He's like, nah, it's not happening. So, I mean, yeah, obviously he has this kind of weird situation where he's like officially beholden to Trump to get anything done, but he also, he can always leave, he has these, he has all this money that he could choose to spend or not for Republicans and Trump. Um, and, and so I guess we'll see whether this is kind of a parting shot, whether he

really cares about this at all. What do you think? I mean, it kind of seems like he's like taking his ball and going home. Like he's kind of like, well, you guys are jerks. You know, I'm going back to my SpaceX town in Texas. He is a little bit, uh, it does seem like he's kind of hurt by it. I mean, so the other thing is he spoke with ours. Technica, um, today came out and he was talking about space X and, and

just the launch they had. And, um, that at the very end of this interview, they asked him about, and, you know, like, look, you've been focusing heavily on politics. And I wonder if you feel like it's affected your time with SpaceX or harm SpaceX. That one's a little bit tricky because obviously it's harmed Tesla but I don't know about SpaceX. Putting that aside, this is what he said. He says, I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics. It's less than people would think because the media is going to over represent any political stuff because political bones of contention get a lot of traction in the media.

It's not like I left the companies. It's just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side. And I've reduced that significantly in recent weeks. And then he's been on Twitter and they've been like, you know, little side tweets here and there where he's just sort of like, yeah, like I didn't, I didn't get done what I wanted to get done. He also had that thing with Bloomberg where he's like, I'm going to spend significantly less money in politics. So it does seem like he's just sort of taking his ball and going home. And I wonder if this is like, um, well, you would know this, I guess you, you

followed the right wing, uh, media ecosystem extremely close. Like it used to be like, you know, it's like, are you an Elon person or you Trump person? But are like, does he have that? Does he have that fandom still on the right or no? You know, I think they are sort of interpreting his remarks as sort of like wacky Elon, whatever, who cares? I mean, I don't think that there are MAGA people who are or Republicans or conservatives who are more are MAGA people who are, or Republicans or conservatives, who are more supportive of Elon than they are of Trump. You know, in terms of the mood, I mean, it's striking to think about how he is in this interview,

kind of deflated, whatever, with like the chainsaw moment, you know, when he was waving the chainsaw around. You know, the other thing that's coming out of this, I think, is that you get this sense that he thought he was gonna roll up to Washington and just go, da, da, da, da, da, I think, is that you get this sense that he thought he was going to roll up to Washington and just go, you know, and figure out the government with a bunch of 20 year olds. And and now he's like, wait, is this a little more complicated? And that's what we heard from other

people in Doge as well. They said, Oh, maybe the government isn't so bad. Maybe there's a reason it's this way. Yeah, there was there's another story tonight that was actually like kind of a victory, a big victory for Doge, really, which is one of the judges that had prohibited some of the Doge members from getting access to sensitive Treasury information. Tonight made a ruling that said, look, you can get access now. But the reason they made the ruling is because Doge had submitted all this copious amount

of paperwork to show that they would handle it with the sensitivity that it deserves, that they follow all these procedures, that they take in the steps necessary and so it was like you know a couple months after they initially saw that they're going to get it but there's no you know high-fiving or even really that much alarmism about it anymore in part because they had to follow the actual steps and so you know it's hard to look at Doge and be like that was a success because the whole point was to shock and awe And they didn't get it. Yeah exactly. And then, you know, obviously going back to the this bill I mean all of these things are being restored now. I mean, it's like it couldn't it's just like hey, you love you Just wasted a couple months, you know, yes. Yes. You got rid of USAID. Yes. Yes

I mean you definitely I mean he fired thousands of of people and they and you know, obviously and change it just by sheer force never quite happens that way always ends up somewhat like this although with less dramatic characters I suppose all right well it's late let's get you out of here I want to get out of here anyway too for those who watch thanks so much for watching really appreciate it subscribe to the feed we get takes like this and we will be feeding you more of them going forward later