24 hours that exposed a schism between Trump and Johnson and sent the government hurtling toward a shutdown
CNN
President-elect Donald Trump has long supported House Speaker Mike Johnson — hosting him on election night, bringing him to the Army-Navy college football game last weekend and backing him privately despite conservative complaints about the House’s actions.
President-elect Donald Trump has long supported House Speaker Mike Johnson — hosting him on election night, bringing him to the Army-Navy college football game last weekend and backing him privately despite conservative complaints about the House’s actions. That’s why it stunned many Republicans when Elon Musk — with Trump’s go-ahead — helped tank Johnson’s short-term government funding deal Wednesday afternoon by unleashing a barrage of social media posts starting early in the morning and calling the deal “criminal.” Trump followed up with threats to oppose any Republican who voted for it in a 2026 primary. And he injected another complication, calling for the debt ceiling — a tool Republicans have used for years to pressure Democrats into spending cuts — to be lifted or eliminated entirely before he takes office. With funding expiring at the end of the night on Friday, Trump’s last-minute demands pushed the government perilously close to a shutdown. The broadsides from Mar-a-Lago left Republican lawmakers wondering — given how much the president-elect and the House speaker communicate — why it took until the final moment for the dramatic schism between Trump and Johnson to burst into view, and for the deal to fall apart. “It’s all very strange,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN. “This was completely avoidable.” By Thursday evening, Trump was backing Johnson again as he tried to advance a different plan that sought to appease the GOP standard bearer’s demands. The 24-hour whiplash both underscored Johnson’s weakness and Musk’s opening with Trump. The bill — which would have extended government funding for three months, lifted the debt ceiling until 2027, extended the farm bill and included $110 billion for disaster relief — failed, with 38 Republicans voting against it.
