U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson was confronted live on Fox News with a tweet from Elon Musk that said a stopgap measure to fund the federal government he proposed "should not pass."
Johnson is trying to build support for the plan to avert a partial government shutdown on Saturday.
The speaker admitted that he needs Democrats to support any funding bill.
Fox & Friends asks Mike Johnson to respond to an Elon Musk tweet live on air pic.twitter.com/XV4F8XDDcm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 18, 2024
When asked to respond to Musk, Johnson said, "We still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans so any bill has to have Democrat votes."
"We gotta 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."
Johnson said he is on a text chain with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. He claims that Ramaswamy told him they "get" that he is in "an impossible situation" with the budget.
Several other Republican lawmakers are also speaking out against his spending plan but the speaker is asking them to just hold on a little while.
He promised bigger spending changes after U.S. President-elect Trump and his fellow Republicans had control of both houses of Congress.
"We're going to run with gusto starting January third," Johnson said.
