Elon Musk and Trump Lock Horns Over Republican Budget Holdout
Representative Thomas Massie awoke Tuesday morning to find himself at the center of the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Musk posted on X in the small hours of Tuesday morning, indicating that he would donate to the Kentucky Republican’s reelection campaign. In recent months, Massie had become a pariah in his party for refusing to bend the knee on any Trump-backed spending bill and opposing the president’s strike in Iran.
Prior to coming out in support of Massie, the former DOGE czar had been escalating his opposition to Trump’s behemoth budget bill and threatening to launch his own political party if the legislation passed in the Senate, even though he previously claimed he was done spending money on elections.
Now, Musk seems to have found a new politician to hitch his wagon to, and sparks are already flying.
“I woke up this morning to find out @elonmusk is supporting my re-election!” Massie wrote in a lengthy post on X Tuesday morning. He thanked Musk for his financial support and lauded the billionaire technocrat’s X (formerly Twitter) takeover for allowing Massie to “bypass conventional media.”
Massie added that the debate over Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was “a referendum on whether members of Congress can think and act independently based on what’s best for the country, or whether all members of congress must be reduced to rubber stamps for their respective political parties and swampy special interests.”
Musk, who embodies those very “swampy special interests,” replied to another one of Massie’s posts: “You’re awesome.”
“You’re too kind, but thank you!” Massie flirted back. “A large part of my job is to keep government from screwing things up for the engineers and entrepreneurs who do make this world a better place. I don’t think enough people appreciate the contributions you and your teams have made to civilization.”
Trump must’ve caught wind of the chemistry between Musk and Massie. “New poll: Anybody I Endorse beats Thomas Massie of Kentucky by 25 points. Get ready. Massie is a very bad guy!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning.
In response to Trump’s threat to unseat him, Massie took a shot at pollster Doug Kaplan. “His pollster looks like a homeless man broadcasting from the stairwell of a crack house. DJT should buy him a cheeseburger,” Massie wrote in a post on X.
A poll from Kaplan Strategies had found that Massie’s rift with the president had made him unpopular among Republican voters. Only 19 percent of respondents had said they would vote for Massie, and that number would drop to 14 percent if Trump endorsed an opponent.