Bulwark Takes - So Awkward! Elon Humiliates Johnson Over Trump’s Bill!

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Elon Musk humiliates Speaker Mike Johnson over a GOP bill. Once allies, the two are now locked in a public feud, with Musk using his platform to torch Johnson—and ignore his calls.

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managing editor at The Bullwork. I'm here with Tim Miller. We're gonna be discussing round three of you on Musk versus Mike Johnson just keeps getting better Juicier has my chance of won any rounds yet on the points He'd know okay, but he's not flustered this could he maintains his very calm demeanor Amidst the barrage no knockouts. It's just 10 to 9 on the scorecard for all three rounds. Yeah. Who's doing the rope it up?

We don't know yet. We'll figure it out. Elon may be throwing too many haymakers here. We'll see a little bit of sort of fourth wall here. We were talking about doing this recording and Tim was like, well, I've already talked about it. And in fact, we have talked about I think you and I have done two Elon recordings in a row at this point. But it's an evolving

storyline. And it just got really a lot more interesting and juicier. In just the last hour recording this around 330pm on Wednesday. So I'm going to go through chronologically what happened. And then Tim's just gonna, you know, do his thing. So cook. This morning, it all starts this morning when Mike Johnson goes to the cameras and he says, look, I think Elon's dead wrong about this bill that he wants to kill. It's weird because we talked about it for 20 minutes and then he did a 180. And then he has this, I called Elon, he didn't answer my call. And you know, poor Mike, that's rough. Okay, thank you.

So now fast forward a couple hours. The count unusual whales clips Mike Johnson saying I called Elon Musk last night and he didn't answer my call. And Elon Musk responds on Twitter, quote, we need a new bill that doesn't grow the deficit. And that's it. And then Mike Johnson gets asked about Elon Musk and he says this. Elon Musk just said we need a brand new bill that doesn't grow the deficit. He was actually quote tweeting a video of you from the press conference this morning saying you tried to reach him last night. Do you have any response? He says we need a brand new bill that doesn't grow the deficit.

Elon, we don't have time for a brand new bill. And I want Elon and all my friends to recognize the complexity of what we've accomplished here. This extraordinary piece of legislation, record number of savings, record tax cuts for the American people and all the other benefits in it. We worked on the bill for almost 14 months. You can't go back to the drawing board and we shouldn't. We have a great product to deliver here. So I know it does it.

It's not perfect by some people's estimations, but you cannot make a perfect enemy. It's a very, very, very good, we're proud of this product. The House Republicans are proud of it and we're happy to go out and explain that to everybody. So I'll continue to try to reach Eamonn and tell him, extol the merits of our work here. I hope he'll understand it. Thank you. And then Elon Musk's tweets out again, urging people to call the representatives and senators to what he says, quote, kill the bill. And so here we are with Elon Musk calling for the bill to be killed. So I'm having one element, I want to get into the substance here because I do think it's pretty important.

But I want to have one kind of element of PTSD about the tactics, which is just listening to you run through all that. It's reminiscent of something for me. Is it Obamacare? No, it's Jeb versus Trump 2016. Oh, right. You know, like Johnson is in the Jeb role, where it's like, or anybody I don't mean to pick on Jeb in particular who I worked for who I love, but it could have been Marco, anybody. It was really normal politician versus Trump, but the PTSD is there for me since I worked for Jeb. But it's like this notion of normal politician, like provides a talking point, you know, that is, that is calculated, that is very careful. You know, that's like, we've been working together.

There is a coalition, you know, there's a certain amount of time that we need to get this bill done. Don't you know how it's always done? Yeah, we need it to work for the American people. You know, you do the politician hand thing and it's like, okay. And then you say that and then usually in the old days in politics, you know, you wait till the next news cycle, maybe the next day and like your other the the other guy would be like, well, I don't know, I'm still against it. It's a dumb bill because of this policy issue. But that's not how this shit happens. Like you give a press conference where you've like given your response. You've talked to

your team, you talk to your strategist. And as soon as your response is out there, Elon's popping out with his thumbs to a hundred million people on X and just being like, this guy's a loser. Call his office and tell him to, and And like that was such a tactical advantage for Trump in 2016 during these primaries is it was just a the rapidness of it. You know, the press release wasn't getting edited by the communications director and the team. It's just, it's the candidate and their thumbs just go and ham. And that is a tactical advantage versus a more traditional political operation. And that's not to say that in this specific case, Elon, what could Mike Johnson's walk?

Yeah. What could Mike Johnson do different? Right? Yeah. You're not like, he's not going to go on Twitter. Be like, Elon, lay off the ketamine. Motherfucker. That's one thing he could do. Um, uh, you know, uh, Elon, I challenge you to a cage match. Um, you know, so, so, so right, it is a structural disadvantage to be Mike Johnson. In this case, substantively, look, I think what is meaningful about this is there was a question when we got on yesterday to talk about this, about like, was he not off his meds? Is he just popping off? Is it because you know, after after he had popped off yesterday, he also like retweeted Mike Lee approvingly. He'd retweeted some weird red pill stuff. Like, okay, he's not really going full force here. He sent one thing. Let's play it by ear to go from that till today being like, call your Senate off, call your offices. And then, and then

next November, this was another tweet you didn't read, but next November, you know, the people that betrayed the country are going to lose something. He said something to that effect in front of me, right? Like that change is pretty notable and like might impact the actions of people on the Hill. I still kind of think that like the inertia of they have to do something for Trump, like will outweigh anything Elon does. But, but this is becoming much more politically prickly in the last couple hours than it was before for House

Republicans. Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%. Because now though, any Republican who does have reservations or wants to seem like they have reservations won't be stepping into an abyss, right? They'll be they'll they'll know that they have some real moneyed interest in a megaphone right behind them cheering them on. Let's be real about these people. I mean, that's all they really care about is being cool with the crowd. They want the crowd's love. And that's what honestly prevents a lot of them from taking quasi principled stands. And in this case, they'll be much more unlikely to do it because they know that they will have a

safety net underneath them. I will say the other thing that's interesting is that it's clear that Johnson at least and I'm assuming the Trump people to Ron Johnson or Mike Johnson, Mike Johnson have tried to back channel to Elon. And he's just not having it. And I think that's the tell here is like he didn't answer the call, right? Like he in normal times, if he wanted to be a team player, if he wanted to like, or at least, you know, give him some benefit of the doubt, he would have answered the call, but he's not answering the call.

So he's just, he's in a PTSD within the band of normal politics. There's like an emerita, you know, like again, I'm just going back to 2016. There were a couple of times or something happened for like somebody from the Ted Cruz team would call me and just like, bro, like again, I'm just going back to 2016. There were a couple of times or something happened like somebody from the Ted Cruz team would call me and just be like, bro, like this isn't right. Like what? You know what I mean? Like you can have, you can have a behind the scenes like, like this isn't fair. This is not in our interest to both do this. Like, like, let's think about something else, you know, and maybe you ever have those calls with the Trump team. No, that's what I'm saying. Maybe you wouldn't listen to them, right?

They would know. They would know that you're I'm not that Maybe you wouldn't listen to them, right? But they would know that Jeb isn't gonna pop off on Twitter and just be like, we just got a call from some loser over at the Trump team and I don't know, or at the Croats. It's like, that's what you can't deal with, Elon or Trump like that, because they're just wild animals. You know, it's like, if you call them,

they might live tweet the call. Like you have no idea what's gonna happen. And so like in this case, uh, like that type of politics, like kind of the back room politics like ain't working with the exactly the leopard eating the face or whatever cliche you want to have, but like what leverage do they have a real in this point? Zero. None. None. Yeah. Zero. I mean, I guess they already took, they already took his precious tax credits out of the fucking bill. I mean, I guess that something like that, right? Like some star, they give him some other carrot for some bill, but he's like the richest guy in the world. Does he

care about that stuff? Yeah. And I know it's a sticky wicket for these guys. I do think that the fact that Elon has like leaned in on the debt as if he's Alan Simpson from 2006 is not like really the strongest political area like if I was advising Elon and I'm like you really want to fuck these guys up you should maybe lean a little bit more into the Medicaid or a little bit more into some of the tax stuff but that said he's correct on the merits and and there will be some audience for it in both the Senate in the house with Ron Johnson in particular is coming to mind and some of the freedom. Oh yeah.

Well, Rand at this point is gone. Mike Lee seems like he's getting towards that place. Ron Johnson now has complete liberty to say, yep, I'm right. That's three right there. Then you had the Medicaid stuff. You have Holly Murkowski Collins. I mean, you can't lose a fourth. So that's that. They might still sneak it through, but

it's going to be really, really interesting to watch. I will just note Breitbart Map Oil is now out there suggesting that Elon's doing this because of the electric vehicle tax credits that's all about the bottom line. Those two sites, Elan and Breitbart have a little bit of friction in history. So we could end up seeing a bit of back and forth there too. What an interesting change of place. Like for years, Breitbart was the terrorists trying to ruin every bill that went through Congress and threatening anybody that voted for it, saying, you're for the swamp, you're for the big debt and deficit. And now it's Matt Boyle running cover for the establishment's desire to increase the debt by, you know, 2.5 to 5 trillion over 10 years. Really, really interesting

change of well, let's sit back. Let's sit back. Pop the popcorn, watch a little bit. Yeah, yeah, little bong hit and just enjoy it. Actually, no, I do the gummies. All right, Tim, thanks, man. Appreciate this. I'm sure we'll be talking about Elon versus Mike Johnson tomorrow, so save your thoughts and insights for then. See you then, buddy.

All right, talk to you later.