What’s in It for Elon?

The world’s richest man isn’t just trolling our democracy. He’s out for himself, and the press is letting him get away with it.

Photo by Nathan Laine / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

Whenever there’s a question over why something happened, it’s prudent to return to the old adage: follow the money. So far, when it comes to Elon Musk, the media has been painfully lax in applying this principle.

Last week, drama erupted as Musk torpedoed a hard-fought, bipartisan and bicameral continuing resolution (CR), which had been negotiated between the two parties for months, to fund the government. He managed to blow it up just as it was set to be voted upon by launching a barrage of tweets condemning the CR and threatening any GOP member who voted for it with a primary.

After a day of high stakes chicken over the U.S. economy, a significantly trimmed down version of the CR, which still contained huge amounts of spending on disaster and farm relief, passed both chambers of Congress, averting a shutdown. The media and punditry widely and correctly viewed this as a blow to Donald Trump, as well as to the political future of Speaker Johnson. Neither proved they could control the unruly far right wing of the party.

Yet the big winner out of this mess was Musk, who saw at least two big things stripped from the CR: a limitation on “outbound investment” in China and continued funding of the U.S. agency tasked with tracking foreign disinformation. Both of these provisions, had they remained in the bill, would have seriously impacted his companies—Tesla on the China investment side and the X platform on the disinformation side—so he is no doubt pleased he was able to tank both in the final CR.

To understand how Musk achieved this, it’s worth reviewing how things went down in the House over the CR, including what happened when one brave House member rose to challenge Musk’s plan. To understand why Musk hated the CR so much, it’s also worth examining what the two provisions stripped out of the bill would have resulted in.

What was Musk truly after?

When Musk began his 11th hour assault on the CR, I wondered what he hoped to get out of it beyond the elevation of his role as chief government wrecking ball. Was he just out to show who was really boss? Or was there more to it? As debate in Congress progressed, thanks largely to a fiery public condemnation of his actions by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Musk’s strategy began to look like a win/win for him.

On the one hand, if Musk succeeded in shutting down the government, he would be hailed as a hero by the far right nihilists who want to burn the federal system down. As Rep. DeLauro pointed out, it wasn’t Musk who would be furloughed. He had zero interest in or care for the federal workers who would be sent home without paychecks right before Christmas. And to the political bomb throwers on the right, the shutdown would be an early test of whether Musk could do the same thing with the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) that he now co-chairs.

On the other hand, if Musk failed at shutting down the government, he could still force the sides to accept a much leaner CR, given the lack of time to negotiate a bigger one. A “clean CR” sounds like a good thing in theory and would likely win most Americans’ approval because it would “cut out the pork”—an easier talking point than a complicated, legalistic CR. But in reality, such a CR would be a huge boon for Musk personally precisely because those complicated, legalistic provisions he hated would be gone.

It was this second path that wound up working out so well for him.

Trump and Johnson lost, but Musk got what he wanted

Let’s review the tape of what happened in the House last week, because it’s important to understand where future vulnerabilities may lie the next time Musk targets a bill or a department’s or group’s funding.

After Musk launched his tweetstorm, GOP support for the CR fell away rapidly. Some 15 hours later, in an awkward “I’m still calling the shots” moment that wound up proving otherwise, president-elect Donald Trump signaled he wanted the bill killed too and that he was fine with a government shutdown. (After all, to Trump, the rest of the government is more or less an annoying impediment to his authority.)

But Trump overplayed his hand and issued a fresh demand: that the debt limit be raised as part of any new CR. Trump knows that if he wants to ram through another huge, multi-trillion dollar tax break for the wealthy and big corporations, Congress would need to agree to raise the debt ceiling later next year. Trump wanted it done now and off the table until 2027.

That produced a “hell no” from Democrats, whose votes were needed to pass the resolution, but more critically was also a non-starter from the far right Freedom Caucus members. Around three dozen of them voted to kill the Trump-backed CR along with the Democrats, sending it to resounding defeat.

Speaker Johnson was left with few options but to propose a trimmed down CR that still contained the bulk of additional spending that many radical GOP House members detested, including $100 billion for disaster relief and $10 billion for farm aid. That version easily passed the House and then the Senate, averting a shutdown.

DeLauro puts Musk in the record

During the debate on the CR, Rep. DeLauro condemned Musk’s actions. She directly questioned his motives for wanting to kill the CR in the first place. As Raw Story reported,

Specifically, she suggested Musk effectively killed a version of the spending bill by sending a tweet threatening that supporters would be primaried because it aimed to regulate U.S. investments in China.

DeLauro didn’t just speak out against Musk. She also detailed her concerns in a three page letter to the congressional leaders of both parties. In that letter, DeLauro noted that Musk had demanded Congress strip out a bill to screen U.S. investments in critical sectors in China. It’s a crucial point that got overlooked by most major media.

DeLauro wanted it formally in the record that

This outbound investment provision was agreed to after months of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations and years of advocacy from Members of Congress. It would have kept innovation and manufacturing in semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and other cutting-edge technologies in the United States and prevented wealthy investors from continuing to offshore production and U.S. intellectual property into China—benefiting only their bottom lines and the Chinese Communist Party, while hurting American workers and threatening our national security. Importantly, many of the innovations this bill would have protected were developed with the help of taxpayer dollars—all the more reason for these innovations to remain at home and not be used to fuel adversaries’ technological and military capabilities.

She then specified how Musk would gain personally from the removal of the screening of these investments in China:

Musk’s car company, Tesla has poured billions of dollars into investments in China, particularly its “gigafactory” in Shanghai. The Shanghai plant is Tesla’s largest car manufacturing facility—the Chinese gigafactory produced about 50 percent of Tesla’s global automobile output over the last year, and Tesla drew nearly a quarter of its global revenue in 2023 from sales of Chinese-made vehicles from the Shanghai factory.

DeLauro warned that Musk planned to expand in China with investments in new technologies, including autonomous driving and large battery development, both of which would have been covered by the bill:

[A]s Tesla awaits the Chinese government’s approval of its “Full Self-Driving” technology, Musk noted that “the value of Tesla lies primarily in its plans for autonomous driving.” And in May of this year, Tesla broke ground on a new $200 million factory to manufacture large batteries critical to its electric vehicle supply chain—down the street from its Shanghai car factory. Notably, proponents of regulating U.S. investment in China have advocated for the inclusion of large battery manufacturing in the list of technologies subject to outbound investment screening.

Without the outbound investment review provisions in the bill, Musk could act with impunity and do whatever he liked, including transfer critical AI and battery technology to China.

Musk attacks DeLauro

In response to DeLauro’s valid public criticism, Musk acted like a bully and a child.

First, he demanded that “this awful creature” DeLauro be “expelled from Congress!”

Second, he joined other internet trolls in mocking DeLauro and using AI to alter her appearance, comparing her several times to the “skeksis” characters in a children’s fantasy film classic.

It is no small irony that Musk, a self-described “champion” of free speech, is now using his money and influence to attempt to silence critics by booting them from office, either through expulsion or by funding primaries against those who do not fall in line.

The Global Engagement Center loses federal funding

Apart from the deletion of a key provision regulating outbound investment in China, another boon for Musk from the “clean” CR was the end of funding for the Global Engagement Center. That’s a unit of the State Department that has been tracking foreign propaganda since 2016 and warning of the risks of disinformation campaigns out of Russia and China.

There had been $61 million appropriated annually toward this specific operation, which has a staff of around 120. As of this Monday, the Center is now shuttered, and there is no longer a dedicated group for monitoring and countering disinformation from foreign enemies.

A chief beneficiary of the loss of this unit is Musk. Disinformation proliferates largely unhindered on his X Platform, formerly known as Twitter. As a result, the Center has been vocal in its condemnation of Musk’s lack of guardrails on X and his own amplification of disinformation. Musk has gone to war with the Center, accusing it last year of being the “worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation” and calling it a “threat to our democracy.”

Both China and Russia spend heavily to spread disinformation, including on X. Russia is primarily interested in pushing anti-Ukraine propaganda to further its interests in the war there, while China hopes to weaken democracy and threaten free speech abroad to silence criticism of its own autocratic government. The loss of the Center is a win for our foreign adversaries as well as Musk.

Some lessons

A key takeaway—and something the media covering our politics should learn—is this: Musk is not just a chaos agent, trolling us all and damaging our democracy simply because he can. Whenever Musk threatens to slash funding or “trim down” government, either in a House bill or when proposing the elimination of whole agencies or departments, any reporting should begin from the presumption that there is something of strong benefit for Elon Musk personally.

For example, as co-chair of DOGE, whenever Musk proposes a cut, the media should trace the impact of the loss of that funding back to him. Does the proposed reduction impact any regulation of any of his businesses? Does he stand to gain, either politically or financially, from the loss of government oversight? That should be the very first story covered.

As I wrote about last week, earlier this month Reuters reported that the Trump transition plan has proposed to eliminate data reporting on autonomous car crashes—an area where Tesla is highly exposed and has had to report the lion’s share of crashes and fatalities. In response, Musk baselessly accused Reuters of doing the bidding of the Biden Administration.

And when Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanded that the incoming Trump administration provide transparency on any conflicts of interest over Musk’s role in the government while heading up DOGE, Musk disparaged her publicly with an image of her as “Pocahontas.”

See the pattern?

There are now far too many instances where Musk has manipulated the government for his own self-interest while seeking to pass it off under some larger policy goal of “government efficiency.” In response to criticism, he has launched ad hominem, personal attacks upon politicians and even threatened public officials openly with loss of their office.

If there are any members of the media reading this, I hope that his now clear record of Musk’s actions causes any future reporting on him to begin with the question, “What’s in it for Elon?”