The Democrats’ X account, boasting 2.3 million followers, shared an AI-generated picture of President-elect Donald Trump wearing an animal costume on all fours and a collar as Elon Musk guides him around on a leash, echoing jabs that the tech billionaire is the one really in charge.
The Democrats followed the tweet up with the comment “Oops!” The meme was a jab at Trump’s handling of Congress’s negotiations of a bill averting a government shutdown. The House passed legislation averting the shutdown on Friday night by a vote of 366-34.
It took three tries for the House to come to a resolution, and Space X CEO and nominee of the newly minted Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk was vocal about his takes on the different versions.
Musk called on Republican lawmakers to vote down an original version of the bill and said any member who supported it should be voted out of office. Trump later expressed similar views of the bill.
Then on Thursday, the second version of the bill, which included a two-year suspension of the debt limit that Trump called for and was promoted by Musk, failed to pass the House.
“This is a MUCH better bill that is closer to being a real continuing resolution (not an omnibus masquerading as a CR), but with support for hurricane victims and farmers, as well as a reasonable extension to the debt ceiling,” Musk posted on X. “If Dems reject this & government shuts down, they deserve to lose bigtime in the midterms.”
By a vote of 174-235-1, the bill failed to pass, and House Democrats pointed the blame at Musk’s intervention. Before the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called the proposal “laughable”
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable,” Jeffries said. “Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Other Democrats, like Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), have accused Trump of following Musk’s lead.
“It’s not Donald Trump asking for this, it’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this,” Goldman said on MSNBC. “The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations, to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure about this budget deal, all of a sudden Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”
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But Karoline Leavitt, incoming White House press secretary, shut down these accusations.
“As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR [continuing resolution], Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view,” Leavitt told Business Insider. “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”
