- 6/4/2025
Elon Musk issued a blistering criticism of the massive Republican bill for President Donald Trump’s agenda Tuesday, posting on X that it is a "disgusting abomination." The Morning Joe panel discusses Musk's criticism and the opportunity the bill presents for Democrats.
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00:00was first to report that Elon Musk has been growing increasingly frustrated with President
00:05Trump over four key issues, but a source has since confirmed that reporting to NBC News.
00:12Musk is upset that the spending bill cuts the electric vehicle tax credit,
00:17which has helped automakers like Tesla. Musk also reportedly tried to stay at the White House,
00:23passed his 130-day limit as a special government employee, but the Trump administration turned that
00:30down. Sources say the White House denied his request to have the Federal Aviation Administration
00:37use his Starlink satellite system for air traffic control. And Musk's final straw happened on
00:44Saturday when the president withdrew the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator.
00:51Someone, Musk, had been championing for the role. And Claire McCaskill, I'm curious what you think
00:59is going on here or where this goes or what Democrats perhaps could do in light of this.
01:04I would add that Elon Musk has lost a lot of money as well along the way.
01:11Yeah, I will not torture our viewers by singing, but breaking up is hard to do.
01:19And that is exactly what is going on here. And I think, Mika, on this show, a number of people
01:26that have joined us over the last six months have said, I'll give it six months. And that's exactly
01:33what it was, six months. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It'll be interesting to see
01:39if the Republicans who are scared of Musk money, how they will react to this. Because in the same
01:48time he was calling it an abomination, at the same time he was stating the obvious, he was talking
01:55about how he would go after people who voted for this bill. So stay tuned for that. And let me point
02:02out one thing in this bill that we haven't talked enough about. This is, if you distill it down to the
02:07essence. This is how nuts this is. This bill actually puts funding to people who really need
02:17it, health care, rural hospitals, to give a tax break to gun silencers. Let that sink in for a
02:26minute. How many Americans are out there protesting, saying, I want gun silencers to get a tax break?
02:31That's some of the stuff that's buried in this abomination. And as time goes on,
02:38more and more of those little nuggets are going to become public. It's going to be more and more
02:41difficult for Thune to find 51. And Ali, as Steve Ratner showed us in his charts in our last hour,
02:47this just trounces the debt and the debts, adding trillions of dollars to it, which
02:52conservative Republicans used to say was core to their belief system, which was to keep the
02:57government small and to rein in spending. They've already violated that by voting for it. Do you
03:02think the Musk pressure matters to Speaker Johnson? Does it matter to these senators and at least
03:09give some cover? Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, others say, yeah, see, even Elon Musk, this guy that you all
03:14look up to and like, he agrees with us. Does his criticism change the dynamic of getting this bill
03:20through? Yeah, I think it shakes the turf here a little bit because I was talking with a lawmaker
03:24yesterday morning before this series of Musk tweets where they were saying, yeah, it seems
03:29like every Senate Republican might voice a little bit of concern, but ultimately they're going to fall
03:33in line here, much like House Republicans did. This changes that dynamic, though, because Musk is
03:37someone who lawmakers have twisted themselves in knots, not just to stick close to, but to defend in
03:43front of their own constituents at times. Now they're going to have to both use him as cover on the
03:48Senate side as they try to make changes here. But then also you're already seeing House Republicans who
03:53went along to go along, come back and say, oh, wait, now I'm finding things in this bill like an
03:57A.I. provision, if you're Marjorie Taylor Greene, that I didn't actually read and I actually don't
04:01like. So this could give some renewed problems to Speaker Johnson, who already had to herd cats to
04:08get this passed the first time. Now the Senate has the momentum to make big changes and the House
04:13can once again revive their claims. Oh, wait, if Senate Republicans get to still be fiscal
04:17conservatives, why can't we still do that, too? I think this really does make the terrain a lot
04:22more rocky than it was first anticipated to be. Chris Matthews, you've seen a lot go on
04:27on Capitol Hill across the years. But I want to ask you about one specific element of this latest
04:33flap between Elon Musk and the president of the United States. Given the president's nature and
04:39past behavior, are you struck by the fact that Elon Musk gets a hall pass for insulting the presidency
04:47and the bill that the president supports? And is it because Elon Musk has the largest wallet in the
04:53world? Well, you know, I don't know about a hall pass, but I've noticed that the dump is being made
05:00by the White House people about all the reasons why Elon Musk did this, which all make him look like a
05:06small person. He's not looking like a good guy. He's looking like he's got a lot of gripes. But the fact
05:11is, Mike Johnson, whatever you think of the speaker, he tried to wire together this bill. He
05:16passed it by one vote. And that included very tough, big cuts in taxes for rich people. The
05:23standard deduction, Steve Ratner really went through it this morning. Huge amounts, not just the tips
05:28and the overtime, that's small potatoes. The big money is in the old tax cut from the first term of
05:34Trump. And of course, this new standard deduction cut. It's an enormous amount of money. And it's all
05:40looking like it's being paid for so that they can cut Medicaid. And I'm telling you, one thing Trump
05:46has always promised that he's not going to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and he's done
05:51it. It's in this bill. So it was so hard to get this thing wrapped up. Johnson said, I finally got
05:57it by one vote. And now Elon Musk has come out with a sledgehammer and is attacking it. It's already
06:04weak. I'm telling you, it's like in a crime. You look for the opportunity. You look for the
06:10motive. Trump wanted to give tax cuts to the rich, and he did it with Medicaid. And any
06:15Democrat that cannot run on that, whether it's Bucks County or Scranton or anywhere in the
06:20country, you can run it on that issue and say, they took away your Medicaid and they gave it
06:25to the rich people. They did it because that's who they are. That's an easy argument. I remember
06:30Tip O'Neill won 26 seats with that argument back in 82. Democrats can win it again this time
06:35in 86. It's a big win for Democrats already. And I see where Hawking Jeffries is jumping on
06:42Musk as his new partner. We'll see how long that lasts. But I'm telling you, it's an amazing break
06:47for the president to have his best buddy who's been out there with his kid sitting on his shoulders
06:53in the Oval Office. And he's come in and dumps all over the president's big, beautiful bill. There
06:59he is. I mean, he's his best buddy. But they're putting the trash out of him. They started putting
07:05the trash out of him last night. If you notice all that stuff you went through, of all the reasons
07:09why he's doing this, they all look small. He doesn't look like a rich guy. He looks like a
07:14small guy. And piggybacking on Chris's point, a couple things here. First, you're right. The
07:19White House trying to, I was talking to people close to the White House last night, they're trying
07:21to frame this Musk's opposition as being very self-interested. It's his business dealings.
07:25It's his friend who couldn't get a NASA job, as opposed to actually larger concerns about the
07:30bill. They're trying to paint Musk as being smaller or selfish. You know, this is also,
07:36it's interesting. We have not heard from President Trump himself yet. We'll see. He hasn't been in
07:41front of the microphone in a couple of days. To this point, he has held his fire. We'll see if
07:45that remains. Trump was up late last night using Truth Social to attack frustration about President
07:50Xi Jinping and how he hasn't been able to get a trade phone call yet. So we'll see if he
07:55erupts at some point. But Claire, let's talk now about your old home in the Senate. This was
08:01already, we heard from some senators in the Republican Party for citing different reasons,
08:07including Josh Hawley on Medicaid, why they had a hard time with this bill. This was already going
08:12to be very complicated. Musk, in some ways, gives us some cover, I suppose. But we also now have some
08:18House Republicans, you know, Johnson digging in on it. Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, wait a minute,
08:23we need to reevaluate it. In short, it's a mess. So how do you see this going right now in the upper
08:28chamber? Yeah, I mean, if somebody said, I have to bet, I would say that most of the folks that are
08:36making noises will back down in one way or another, especially if they're given a fig leaf, some kind
08:43of little tweak that they can claim, well, that did it for me. You know, this is a group that decided
08:50it was okay to put Pete Hegseth in charge of the military. So I don't have a lot of confidence
08:56that all of a sudden, they're going to grow a backbone and say, this is a mess. On the other
09:00hand, if there are four, I predict there'll be 10 or 11. Once you get to the point where it's going
09:08to go down, you'll see a lot of rats jumping off that sinking ship and jumping on the no side.
09:16So what Thune really has to worry about is that fourth vote, because he's got three
09:21already that have shown they're not afraid of Trump and some, some because they're not running
09:27again, some because they're from states where it helps them to be against Trump. But I think he's
09:32got Murkowski and Collins and McConnell probably are comfortable with a no, but that fourth one is
09:40tough. And if he, that fourth one happens, then you'll see the dominoes start to fall a little
09:46more. But I don't have confidence. These guys will stand up and do the right thing. I would have bet
09:51money. They wouldn't confirm Pete Hegseth or Bobby Kennedy. And look what happened. Yeah. They don't
09:55have a track record of standing up to Donald Trump. That's for sure. Let's talk about spending,
09:59Ali. Yesterday, the Trump administration sent Congress its request to claw back more than $9 billion
10:04in already approved spending. These are so-called rescissions. A rescissions package would be the
10:10first to codify the cuts spearheaded by Elon Musk and the Department of Government efficiency. The
10:15package includes more than $8 billion in cuts and foreign aid and more than $1 billion in cuts for NPR
10:22and PBS. It also includes cuts to education and transportation programs, reproductive health and
10:28funding for the World Health Organization, as well as millions in cuts for UNICEF and the U.S.
10:34president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, famously known as PEPFAR, put into place by George W. Bush.
10:41So these are the doge cuts. This is the president, the Trump administration telling Congress,
10:46pull this stuff out of the budget. Yeah. And we'd been hearing about this
10:49rescissions package for some weeks now. It's finally landing on Capitol Hill. The speaker looking to tee
10:54up a vote quite quickly on this, in large part because the House Freedom Caucus is already out there
10:59demanding it. And I think that Claire McCaskill makes a great point. The longer the reconciliation
11:03package hangs out there, and people see how many various, we'll call them Christmas tree ornaments,
11:08that's what we tend to call them at the end of the year because those spending bills pass around the
11:12holidays. But there's a lot of things tucked into this legislation. The longer it hangs out there,
11:16the more people have a chance to elevate stuff out of it. So you have to keep people like the Freedom
11:21Caucus in line and maybe quiet, giving them this kind of a fig leaf in the short term, codifying the
11:26cuts, showing that you're cutting spending. But it's appropriation season on Capitol Hill. The reason
11:32we're seeing all of these various secretaries come up there is because they're testifying for
11:36lawmakers to try to say, this is why I need the upcoming budget for the fiscal year that I need.
11:41Appropriators are now being asked to approve a future budget. And then also knowing that the
11:46budget that they just approved is now being clawed back by the administration to advance whatever policy
11:51goals the administration is trying to advance. So I had an appropriator on my show this morning who
11:55was saying, we don't really see why we should be approving future funding requests when you're just
12:01ignoring them anyway. And that's a clear tension point on Capitol Hill. Democrats have already been
12:06incensed by this. Will Republicans at some point start coming around? Because frankly, House Republicans
12:11have been hung out to dry here on a number of different issues, whether it's defending Musk and
12:17Doge, having to defend clawbacks in spending, and then also the fact that they already voted for this
12:22reconciliation bill. So no matter what form it passes in, they still have to defend this at the ballot box
12:27in whatever its original form was. Chris Matthews, what are the opportunities for Democrats here as these
12:34cuts are codified, a lot of people being hurt, and America's influence perhaps waning?
12:42Well, you know, it's a case of business guys coming in, business people coming into government when they
12:48don't know what they're talking about. If you want to reduce the size of the debt or the deficit this year,
12:53$3 trillion, you're going to have to take action on entitlements. And nobody wants to do that
12:58politically. Nobody will ever want to do that. Nobody wants to cut Social Security, Medicare,
13:02Medicaid. Nobody wants to do that. It hurts you at home. So what do they do? They take a sledgehammer
13:07to things like Voice of America, and the Peace Corps gets cut, and PEPFAR. And these kinds of things are
13:15small potatoes, but it makes the conservatives very happy. But I remember doing this survey once of asking
13:20the people in the country, what do you want to cut? And everybody said foreign aid. Foreign aid is
13:25nothing. It's minuscule. And what do they want to protect education? They do think intellectually
13:32about it, but the money doesn't add up. And I think that the Democrats have got to act. They're going to
13:37act where the real opportunity I see is where they're cracking with Trump. And that's where they're going
13:43back to their World War II and Cold War instincts about Russian aggression. And what I've seen in the last
13:50week is 80-some senators lining up behind Lindsey Graham and Dick Blumenthal to really try to stick it to
13:57Russia for what it's been doing to Ukraine. It's a real case of what they really believe. They really are
14:03Winston Churchill fans. They really do root for Zelensky. Lindsey Graham roots for Zelensky, not Zelensky. They don't
14:12root for Trump on this one. Trump's wrong on this. He's wrong about rooting for Russia. He's got this strange
14:17affection for Russia and Putin. And it's so weird. I think it's gradually going to crack
14:24open that the Republicans are still Republicans that are not entirely MAGA crazies. And I think
14:30that on that front and on Medicaid, I would say bet the House on the Republicans losing lots of seats
14:36over Medicaid. Bet the House on their true beliefs showing up about what they really think of Russia
14:42in terms of its nationalism and its aggression. These are real beliefs and political fears. They're going to lose
14:49maybe 20 seats in November next year because of Medicaid cuts, because Trump promised as recently as a week
14:55ago, I'm not going to touch it. And he's touching it. And he shouldn't be doing it politically.
15:12Bye.
15:13Bye.