A state of chaos that left many on Capitol Hill in a frenzy Thursday as an effort to stop a government shutdown was sunk by Republican infighting has been purposefully created, a CNN analysis showed.
And it’s just the start of what’s to come.
“Welcome to the new Washington,” wrote the network’s Stephen Collinson.
He was commenting after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who has taken a place at President-elect Donald Trump’s shoulder, issued a warning that effectively destroyed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposed spending bill that would halt an imminent government shutdown.
But, though Trump appears to have been central to the blowing up of the smooth running of D.C., he might have made a big mistake. He needs to find a way to end the chaos if he has any chance of achieving his plans, Collinson wrote.
“The Trump-Musk blocking maneuver plunged the capital into one of its classic year-end crises, pitched Johnson’s hopes of keeping his job into extreme doubt and offered a preview of the chaos that may churn in Trump’s second term,” Collinson wrote.
Alongside the end-of-year Congress mess, the Dow Jones suffered a historic 10-day run of losses, Trump’s contentious Cabinet picks face uncertainty, and threats of retribution against the incoming president’s perceived enemies have created tension in the capital that’s barely been seen before.
“For many of Trump’s supporters and boosters in the conservative media who are anticipating massive cuts to federal programs, the mayhem is the point,” wrote Collinson.
“Even if the impasse leads to a damaging government shutdown, that may represent progress for some since the government itself is viewed with disdain on the populist right. And by taking aim at the Washington status quo even before he takes the oath of office, Trump is doing exactly what he said he’d do on the campaign trail.”
But, Collinson said, Trump now has to find some way to steady the ship if he plans to push through his key campaign promises, “even if that draws him into conflict with base voters and MAGA ideologues who seem happy to burn government to the ground.”
To do that, he needs to figure out how to control the world’s richest man, who has shown he now wields great power over the U.S. government. On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that any Republican voting for Johnson’s plan should lose their seat at the next election.
It was considered by many to be the death knell for the spending bill.
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“The mega disruptor largely responsible for the uproar is Musk,” Collinson wrote.
“In his biography of the SpaceX pioneer, Walter Isaacson described the philosophy of the president-elect’s new super buddy as, “Take risks. Learn by blowing things up. Revise. Repeat.”
“ … It was not immediately clear how closely Trump and Musk were coordinating. But the timeline of Musk’s pressure and the president-elect’s belated entry into the public fray offered demoralized Democrats an opening.
“New York Rep. Dan Goldman conjured a scenario on X clearly calculated to get under the president-elect’s skin. ‘As the shadow Pres-Elect, Elon Musk is now calling the shots for House Rs on government funding while Trump hides in Mar-a-Lago behind his handlers,’ Goldman wrote.
“‘It increasingly seems like we’re in for 4 years of an unelected oligarch running the country by pulling on his puppet’s strings.’”
