Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
On Wednesday, Elon Musk began posting frantically on Twitter against the continuing resolution Congress needs to pass to keep the government operating.
For weeks now, House Republicans have been negotiating a traditional American funding bill. Since the government is broken and regular-order budgeting doesn’t happen anymore, Congress is routinely passing “continuing resolutions” (CRs) funding the government for a few months at a time, always at the last minute.
The bill had the usual give-and-take. Members of Congress from areas hard-hit by hurricanes wanted disaster relief. Republicans wanted aid for farmers. Democrats were fine with all that but wanted some things in return, since they would have to provide the votes necessary for passage. And a number of bipartisan agreements on things like health policy and junk fees were added, because this was the last bill out of Dodge in this Congress. This is all very normal.
The process has been ongoing for weeks and was almost complete, until Elon Musk stepped in. Out of nowhere on Wednesday, he started posting frantically on Twitter, demanding the CR be stopped and the government shut down until January 20, and threatening to primary anyone who voted for it. For the moment at least, that’s exactly what happened. Both President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance turned against the bill. The latest is that a new bill was offered stripping practically everything out, but because it includes a temporary suspension of the debt limit, it lost 38 Republican votes in the House and failed. There is no path forward, and the government shuts down tonight at midnight without action.
In short, the world’s richest man is running Republican Party strategy, through posts on his own social media network. Voters thought they elected Donald Trump, but Elon Musk is calling the shots.
It’s hard to say with any certainty what Musk’s motivation is here. One factor might be that his companies are under multiple federal investigations from the NLRB, EPA, FTC, and SEC, among others, and shutting down the government until Trump takes office would put a stop to that, probably permanently.
But I think there is another factor. Musk’s frenzy of activity online bears all the hallmarks of what some call “poster’s madness.” Musk’s addiction to posting has gotten measurably worse over time—and dramatically so since he bought Twitter, turned it into the Völkischer Beobachter, and rejiggered the algorithm to blast his posts at every user on the platform, all the time.
If you have a relative with a severe addiction to Twitter or Facebook, you might have seen the fugue state that takes hold after a long session of mindless scrolling and posting—glued to the phone, eyes glazed, mouth hanging open, bathing in an ocean of random videos, memes, AI slop, screenshots, and so on from all over the world, polishing the brain to a mirror finish. (Ask me how I know.) “Just pick your phone up and drool for three hours.” In such a trance, people often become both highly agitated and highly suggestible, automatically believing and sharing any angry propaganda or hysterical lie they come across, without checking the source or listening to any corrections.
Musk’s online attacks on the CR bear all the hallmarks of poster’s madness. For all of Wednesday, he was flinging multiple wild exaggerations, distortions, or outright falsehoods, a lot of them agreeing with random posts he apparently stumbled across. It is not true, as he alleged, that the bill would raise congressional pay by 40 percent; nor that it would fund a new stadium in Washington, D.C.; nor that it would “shield” the members of the January 6th Committee; nor that it would set up “bioweapons labs.”
All told, he posted more than 100 times over the course of the day.
It’s part of a pattern. Back in October 2022, Musk posted preposterous misinformation about the man who assaulted Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer. That led an engineer at Twitter to call Musk out to his face before resigning, as told in the book Character Limit by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. “It’s only really like the tenth percentile of the adult population who’d be gullible enough to fall for this,” the engineer said.
I strongly suspect that Musk doesn’t have a clear plan for what to do with the budget or even know what is in it. He’s just compulsively posting the first thing that pops into his head, often because he saw it float to the surface of the vast ocean of right-wing misinformation surging around on his Twitter feed.
And that’s a problem for Donald Trump. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but Musk might be even more erratic, impulsive, and unhinged than he is. Trump did cause a shutdown in 2018, but that at least was over something real—namely, his demand for border wall funding—not nutcase misinformation posted on Gab. There’s no sign that Musk understands there are major concessions to Republicans in the CR, particularly a clawback of IRS funding, that might end up being taken out if Speaker Mike Johnson has to rely on Democratic votes to get the government back open. House Republicans tell reporters there is no plan at all.
There’s also no sign that Musk understands that shutdowns are extremely unpopular. Trump eventually backed down during the 2018-2019 shutdown, because he was blamed for it and it tanked his approval rating. That’s been the story of almost every shutdown, and this one is even more obviously caused by the GOP than the previous ones.
Republicans have a tiny majority in the House, and they have consistently struggled to unite around anything because of their large caucus of bellowing idiots who demand the impossible and attack anyone who doesn’t deliver it as a RINO sellout. That majority is getting even smaller in the next Congress. Adding a hyperactive ultra-billionaire, who gets his news from open antisemites, to the mix will make it even harder. And as Josh Marshall points out, Musk, with his billions and control of a social media platform that has become central to the right-wing propaganda machine, will be a lot harder to get rid of than other toadies Trump has thrown over the side from time to time. Get ready for untold chaos for as long as Republicans are in charge.
