After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly spoke out against President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) rushed to defend the embattled legislation to the South African centibillionaire.
Politico reported Thursday that Johnson engaged directly with Musk in response to the tech CEO's comments on CBS Sunday Morning. The show published a snippet of an upcoming interview between correspondent David Pogue and Musk set to air June 1, in which Musk said the multitrillion-dollar spending bill was "disappointing and "undermines the work" his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was doing to reduce federal spending.
"I think a bill can be big, it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be both," Musk said, while laughing.
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During an interview with Fox News, Johnson admitted that he reached out privately to Musk to defend the bill. However, the speaker notably didn't delve into the particulars of what he said to Musk, or whether he got a response.
"I sent my good friend Elon a long text message explaining it can be big and beautiful," Johnson said.
Johnson's remarks come as the bill — which cuts funding for Medicaid and Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for a 10-year extension of tax cuts overwhelmingly skewed in favor of the rich – faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) has slammed the bill over its cost, and has said he refuses to support a bill that would increase the deficit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projecting it would add more than $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, but Johnson doubted the CBO's findings.
“We believe we’re gonna get the economy going and this is going to be deficit reducing at the end of the day,” Johnson said. “It matters how you do the math.”
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Click here to read Politico's full report.