Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

80% : Welcome to the new Washington of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
50% : It was not immediately clear how closely Trump and Musk were coordinating.
50% : Trump supporters pose this question: After Republicans won in 2024 on a promise to gut the federal government and slash budgets, why would they make their first act since Trump's triumph a classic year-end spending spree?"I've been a 'no' on it a long time," GOP Rep. Tim Burchett told CNN's Jim Acosta.
50% : The Tennessee lawmaker added: "President Trump ran on changing things.
48% : In one of his posts on X, Musk suggested that the best path for Republicans would be to freeze Washington until Trump takes office.
48% : After all, Trump demanded they cooperate in passing a stripped-down bill without any of their priorities.
45% : He went on: "So, the feature there is that we'll have Republican-controlled Congress and Trump back in the White House and we get to decide spending for 2025."
44% : 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.
42% : I say if we're going to pass something, pass it about three days into the next Congress and hand it over to Trump and let him handle it."
37% : But the sudden imbroglio also highlighted one of the key issues facing Trump in his second term: If he wants to pass his tax cuts, push through his immigration overhauls, defend the country and leave a meaningful legacy, he will have to find some way to govern - even if that draws him into conflict with base voters and MAGA ideologues who seem happy to burn government to the ground.
35% : But Jeffries' statement suggests they will stand firm and demand Trump back down.
34% : A speakership in perilJohnson said he'd tried to sell his bill to Musk and his fellow co-chair of Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, on a text chain.
31% : The selloffs underlined a volatile national moment and some of the economic challenges Trump may face after the Federal Reserve warned that inflation will tick up next year.
26% : He said Trump is "not read into this ... and he's just learning about it ...
23% : "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.
23% : In fact, Trump said so himself: "Increasing the debt limit is not great, but we'd rather do it on Biden's watch.
21% : "The collapse of the stop-gap spending bill presented Johnson, Trump and Democrats with risky dilemmas.
20% : Musk whipped up opposition to the bill all day, driving fury on MAGA media outlets, before Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance issued a late afternoon statement demanding a streamlined spending bill without Democratic deliverables.
19% : He would need to be saved by Donald Trump," Lanza said.
18% : North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer told Raju he was frustrated that Trump had not made his bottom lines clearer sooner.
16% : But if Johnson is in danger -- only days after appearing at the Army v. Navy game in a show of unity with Trump and Musk on Saturday -- his fate could complicate Trump's big inauguration party next year.
7% : "Risky dilemmasMissouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN's Manu Raju after speaking to the president-elect that Trump had been blindsided by Johnson.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.