The New Republic's Greg Sargent has been doing some analysis of President-elect Donald Trump's personnel decisions and has come to the conclusion that Trump is poised to "screw over" congressional Republicans.
During a discussion with congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, Sargent argued that Trump's decision to empower X owner Elon Musk with his "Department of Government Efficiency" is going to put House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans on the spot to back what he predicts will be massively unpopular cuts to popular government programs.
"Either Elon Musk is allowed to proceed with these immense spending cuts that completely screw Trump voters in all kinds of ways, or Trump has to neuter Musk and then that creates a whole different problem with MAGA," Sargent writes. "It seems like the conflict between Musk and Republicans is unavoidable and, either way, is a looming fiasco for the MAGA movement."
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Ornstein largely shared Sargent's assessment and said that Trump had believed that he could contain Musk by giving him what amounts to a glorified advisory committee without understanding the power of the megaphone bought for himself when he took over Twitter.
"He is handcuffed to the richest man in the history of the world who has his own powerful communications network that now has a huge following in MAGA," he writes. "And if Elon Musk is dumped by Trump, Musk, who of course wants to be the alpha male, he’s always been the alpha male, and Trump doesn’t want another alpha male around him, he could make real trouble for Trump.
"So you’ve got Musk screwing with congressional Republicans, and Musk then screwing with Trump. It’s hard to see how all of that works out into a set of happy marriages."