The president-elect was eager to evade responsibility for the consequences of a potential shutdown even as he blew up a bipartisan deal that would have kept the government open.
It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
Donald Trump has yet to take office but the president-elect and Elon Musk are already influencing policy, putting the federal government hours away from a shut down.
A Republican backlash to the speaker’s plan to temporarily fund the government has sparked new talk of ousting him, and highlighted the challenges he will face if he manages to keep his job.
The president-elect weighed in against the huge spending package after Elon Musk had spent the day warning Republicans not to support it. The blowup left the compromise on life support.
A lot of what the government does is hard to quantify and involves complicated tasks that inevitably require bureaucratic coordination and, yes, inefficiency.
President-elect Donald J. Trump is assembling a team of aides bent on confrontation with China. But he also has advisers who do business there, including Elon Musk.
The Pentagon needs what the company offers to compete with China even as it frets over its potential for dominance and the billionaire’s global interests.