House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked to respond to criticism from conservative lawmakers and Elon Musk over the bloated interim spending bill released Tuesday.
In a post on X, Musk said the measure “should not pass.”
During an interview on “Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning, co-host Steve Doocy pointed to Musk’s response and noted that the only way to pass the bill will be with Democrat support.
“Well, I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon, Vivek and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this,” Johnson explained. “And Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight. And he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ And he said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.'
“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans,” Johnson continued. “So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said 'it’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.' And I said, 'guess what, fellas? I don’t either.'”
“We got to get this done because here’s the key — by doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in, roaring back with the America First agenda," he added. "That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3rd, when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again are in control and all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we have been wanting to do for the last couple of years. Right now, Democrats [are still in control], and that’s the problem. So we’ve got to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown. So we get the short-term funding measure and we get to March where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start and we can’t wait to get there.”