JIMSMASH ! ! !: 2024

Friday, December 20, 2024

HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING...

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM PRESIDENT ELON MUSK

KIDS CANCER.

BIPARTISAN DEAL.

Elon Musk, self-described “First Buddy” of President-elect Donald Trump, went all out to thwart a last-minute funding deal to avert a government shutdown. The move was a direct challenge to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who rolled out the sweeping plan on Tuesday night.

Now, it appears Musk has successfully killed the stopgap measure in its cradle — before it was even brought to a vote.

In a manic posting spree on Wednesday, the world’s richest man bombarded his platform X, formerly Twitter, with attacks on a proposed funding bill, which would’ve kept the government funded through March 14 and had bipartisan support. He also amplified misinformation about what’s in the 1,500-page bill — as did his nongovernmental commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is recommending cuts to government spending and regulations to the incoming Trump administration.

Trump himself opposes the resolution, according to a joint statement shared Wednesday by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. Various hard-right GOP representatives also vowed to vote against it. Should Johnson fail to get a spending plan passed by Dec. 20, the federal government will enter a partial shutdown ahead of the holidays. But that apparently sounded ideal to Musk and his social media clique.

President-bought Elon Musk

with his side kick, Donald Trump

“YES,” Musk commented on an X post from a user who wrote, “Just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days.” In his own post, Musk wrote, “No bills should be passed [by] Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office. None. Zero.” (Upon Trump’s inauguration, Republican majorities will control both chambers of Congress.) Elsewhere, Musk reshared a meme of himself hacking at the bill with a sword, captioned “KILL THE BILL.” In yet another post, he wrote: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”

Musk personally thanked a number of GOP representatives who announced via X that they were voting “no” on the bill, including Reps. Barry Moore, Anna Paulina Luna, Wesley Hunt, Eli Crane, Randy Weber, Michael Cloud, Jeff Van Drew, Warren Davidson, Keith Self, Kevin Kiley, and Andy Ogles, many of whom blasted it as an “omnibus” package of excessive spending and Democratic giveaways.

The funding bill, H.R. 10445, contained provisions for allocating roughly $100 billion to relief efforts to aid Americans recovering from natural disasters in the past two years, some $30 billion in aid to farmers, and federal funding to replace the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. It would also have criminalized revenge porn, given the District of Columbia greater control over the area surrounding the defunct Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium as they seek to bring the Washington Commanders back into the city, addressed transparency issues in hotel prices and live event ticketing, and implemented health care reforms, including some intended to lower prescription drug costs.
More controversially, the bill included a pay raise for members Congress, justified as a cost of living adjustment, a provision that drew criticism from both sides of the aisle. At most, it would have boosted their income by $6,600, a 3.8 percent bump from the annual salary of $174,000 that most of them receive. The official DOGE account and Musk both falsely claimed that the pay raise would be $69,000, or nearly 40 percent. Musk meanwhile shared a post from a far-right influencer who wrote that the resolution would impose mask and vaccine mandates. Although there was a section about ensuring pandemic preparedness that mentioned the need for accelerated vaccine research, there is no language about mandating their administration, nor does the word “mask” appear.

“Fuck cancer. Especially pediatric cancer,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X. “These people want to punish these previous little kids to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in human history.”

President-elect Donald Trump endorsed the new funding bill on Thursday afternoon, writing on Truth Social: “Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to a very good Deal for the American People. The newly agreed to American Relief Act of 2024 will keep the Government open, fund our Great Farmers and others, and provide relief for those severely impacted by the devastating hurricanes.”

“A VERY important piece, VITAL to the America First Agenda, was added as well — The date of the very unnecessary Debt Ceiling will be pushed out two years, to January 30, 2027,” Trump added. “All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote ‘YES for this bill.”

Musk took a victory lap on Wednesday as the odds of Congress passing the original bill collapsed, and touted posts about how X — not Musk himself — had supposedly saved the American people from wasteful government spending. “Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead,” he wrote. “The voice of the people has triumphed!”

Or the voice of the world’s richest man, anyway.