‘What’s Your Message to Elon Musk?’ Steve Doocy Confronts Speaker Mike Johnson With Musk’s Saying Spending Bill ‘Shall Not Pass’
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked Speaker Mike Johnson to react to Elon Musk’s condemnation of a congressional spending bill he’d put forth during a Wednesday morning appearance.
Late Tuesday, Congressional leaders released the text of a spending bill that funds the federal government into March, with more than $100 billion earmarked for disaster aid and some late-in-the-congressional term policy bills as lawmakers prepare to leave town for the holidays.
The Fox News morning show segment opened with members of Speaker Johnson’s very own caucus expressing frustration with what some of the more fiscally conservative members called a “dumpster fire” of the spending bill. Rep. Chip Roy said of the bill, “We are just fundamentally unserious about spending. If you have a blank check, you can’t shrink the government. If you can’t shrink the government, you can’t live free.”
Johnson dismissed the criticism he had just seen as part of the “sausage-making process.” He then defended why this version of a spending bill he put forth made sense, saying:
Short-term funding extension until March 14th. That would have been an ease thing to pass. Here is what happened. We also had to add due to circumstances outside of any of our control emergency funding. We have two major emergencies, a record historic hurricane season that we all know Helene and Milton and the threats destroyed a big swathe of the country. We have to have funding, install farmers and ranchers food producers in this country in jeopardy of going under. Three loss years primarily because of bidenomics and inflation and lots of other factors outside their control. For the first time since I have been in congress, guys, 8 years, not just farmers and ranchers
urgently needing to help.
“Mr. Speaker, it’s not just so you’ve got a bunch of Republicans who are angry at you. They don’t like this,” Doocy said, adding context to his future as House Speaker. “And just in a couple of weeks, you’re going to stand once again to run for Speaker of the House. And you don’t need a bunch of Democrats mad at you.”
“But, you know, and this is breaking news,” Doocy said. “You do not know. You know, who also does not like this? Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, just tweeted: ‘This bill should not pass.’ The only way you’re going to be able to pass it now, Mr. Speaker, is with Democrats. If you if you could, what’s your message to Elon Musk?”
“Well, I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon, Vivek and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this. And the Vivel and I talked last night about almost midnight,” Johnson replied. “And he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ And he said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.'”
“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans,” he continued. “So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said it’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending. And I said, guess what, fellows? I don’t either.”
“We got to get this done because here’s the key — By doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in, roaring back with the America First agenda. That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3rd, when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again rent control and all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we have been wanting to do for the last couple of years.” Johnson concluded. “Right now, Democrats still control the fence, and that’s the problem. So we’ve got to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown. So we get the short term funding measure and we get to march where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start and we can’t wait to get there.”
Watch above via Fox News
