The Biden administration is putting the onus on Congress to reach a funding deal that can pass with just days before a possible shutdown could take effect. However, President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have expressed opposition to the bipartisan deal, throwing congressional leadership into a last-minute frenzy to address concerns — or reach a new deal.

Video Script:

OutFront
tonight, we begin with breaking news. Elon Musk’s government shutdown, a sentence that even a year ago
would have seemed completely bizarre. But not now. Not after images like that. Because the man
who has been by Trump’s side nearly every day since the election
and since that moment at a rally, is pushing the country
to the brink of a shutdown. He is going after the House
speaker’s funding deal just days before the deadline. Speaker Mike Johnson has spent weeks
negotiating a deal with Democrats doing what lawmakers are doing. You know, horse trading, negotiating. and of course, he needs Democrats
support to pass anything in the closely divided House
that he faces. And it was Musk who stood up and said,
no way. Firing the first shot just hours
after Johnson released his bill. Musk posted
this on his social media platform. This bill should not pass. And then he posted a photo of the bill
with the caption, ever seen a bigger piece of pork? Then he posted. The more I learn, the more obvious
it becomes that this spending bill is a crime
and a threat. Quote any member of the House or Senate
who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves
to be voted out in two years. We’ll use the money to primary
them, doesn’t he? Then he posted again,
no Bill should be passed Congress until January 20th
when real Donald Trump takes office. None. Zero. Well, that, of course,
definitionally means a shutdown. You can’t move the dates
on some of these things. And a long one. The deadline to pass the spending bill
is this Friday at midnight. That’s a full month
before Trump takes office. And on a day
when the Dow plunged more than 1100 points and marked the longest losing streak
since 1974. Let’s just be loud and clear. Who is in the driver’s seat here? It’s Elon Musk. He posted first at 4:15 a.m. Eastern time. In fact,
he posted and reposted about this bill more than 70 times before Trump
even waited more than 70 times. Trump followed Musk in a major way. 12 hours later. Just moments ago, after those 70 posts
from Elon, Trump said in a statement, Republicans must get smart and tough
if Democrats threaten to shut down the government
unless we give them everything they want and call their bluff. He went on to say this chaos would not
be happening if we had a real president. We will in 32 days. Well, of course,
whatever you think of the bill itself and the ugliness of government,
it’s a fair conversation nonetheless. There are laws and there are rules,
and there is a deadline for spending bill. And the reason that there is a sudden
chaos is because of Musk and his last minute
move to undermine Johnson. And again, we should note it is Trump and
Musk, not Democrats or House Republicans, who are threatening the shutdown
by killing the bill. And we’ve seen Musk’s influence on Trump
take hold right before our eyes, right
smack in the middle of Trump and his running mate at the high profile
Army Navy. I mean, it’s it’s almost like an eye image
and someone keeps plastering him in the middle, except for
this is actually real photos. And don’t forget Trump
and Musk were together. Must join the family photo
for Trump on the election night victory. Trump’s granddaughter posted a photo
with him calling him an uncle. He was even seated right next to Trump
at Thanksgiving dinner, swaying to the YMCA song. But tonight, some of these images,
which then seemed funny, take on a more somber tone
as the clock clicks down to a shutdown. And speaker
Mike Johnson, who was being responsible as the speaker of the House, the House
Republican, is running out of options. Let’s get straight to Manu Raju on Capitol
Hill. And Manu is stunning turn of events
Elon Musk for 15 a.m. or whatever time zone he’s on. you could have been even earlier
in the night. post 70 post go by. Trump weighs in and wow, here we are. What are you hearing now? Yeah. The United States Congress
is in an absolute state of disarray in the aftermath of Donald Trump
blowing up this carefully negotiated compromise
to avoid a government shutdown by weeks. And Mike Johnson,
the speaker of the House, had spent weeks behind closed doors
cutting a deal with Democratic leaders who control the Senate
and who still control the white House, trying to come up with a deal
to avoid a government shutdown. But Donald Trump, coming in late
in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s opposition and saying not only should this bill not pass, but they should add
the highly toxic issue of raising the national debt
limit as part of it, simply because he does not want to deal
with the debt limit when he is president. That has added enormous complication
to all of this. A lot of Republicans say I spoke to
tonight say that is simply not possible. It’s unclear how this proceeds. This all comes as Johnson is facing
significant pushback, particularly as he tries to get the votes to become
speaker of the House come January 3rd. Some Republicans say his handling of
this is a reason why they may not vote for him. So you won’t vote for him? He does not have my vote. Will you change your mind? I would take a Christmas miracle. We just won the elections. We have a mandate
and he’s giving away the farm. He’s turned this thing
into a Christmas tree. I’m wondering
why we have control of Congress. If we’re not going to do what we say
we’re going to do. Do you think the speaker, given the way he’s handled this,
deserves to be reelected? On January 3rd? I think there’s going to be debate on it
if if we’re not careful. we’ll be
we’ll be having some serious debate and there’s very little margin for error. Johnson in the narrowly divided House,
he can only lose a handful of votes in order to become reelected speaker. But that is one issue
that is kind of driving some of this that’s happening on Capitol Hill
right now. Johnson losing support potentially. We’ll see even from Donald Trump. And I’m told by Senator Josh Hawley
tonight that Trump called Hawley and railed on Johnson’s
handling of this bill as well, contended he was blindsided,
even as Johnson’s allies that they’ve been coordinating
with the Trump transition team all around. So a lot of finger pointing as Congress
in a state of disarray and panic
to avoid a shutdown by week side. All right, Manu, thank you very much. Disarray and panic. who was it to take? Said chaos follows Nikki Haley. All right. Everyone is here with me
now. Former congressman Charlie Dent. and lest anyone think, Congressman, that you are in the witness
protection program, I just want. That, it’s the holiday season
and you’re stuck in traffic. and I’m sad
you’re not sitting next to me. but there you are. So, you’re looking very,
all dressed here to come on Saturday. But let’s go ahead and start
with where we are. 70 pose from Elon
Musk 70, starting at 4:15 a.m.. stirring this up,
Trump weighs in finally. And here we are. Chaos and disarray. What do you think’s happening here? Well, this is a governmental dysfunction. These are exhibits. Abcdef. what’s happening here
is that Donald Trump and the hardliners in the House
Republican Conference wanted to kick these appropriations bills
into the new year, into the new year. They got their wish, and they’re going to fund the government
until March the 13th or 14th. and now Elon Musk and Donald Trump
don’t want to do that. They’ve changed their minds. this is a funding bill
that’s simply going to fund the government at current levels. Yes. There’s a cost of living adjustment
for congressmen. and there’s some other things
in here, too. There’s some phony business
about Liz Cheney, but it makes no sense. They should have simply passed
the 12 appropriations bills before Christmas,
like many of the Republican appropriators wanted to do
when the House and the Senate. But it was Donald Trump and the hard
liners in the House Republican conference who wanted to kick in the new year. Now they don’t. And frankly, many of them are not going to
vote for a continuing resolution anyway. So they take advice and input from the
very people who won’t vote for the bill. That must pass. This is and this is, this is Gobsmacking
we stupid? it is an incredible moment. By the way, you mentioned the Liz
Cheney thing in there. There is, something going after Liz
Cheney saying she broke the law. I’m going to get to that in a moment,
actually, former, spokesperson for for her will be here, but Vivian Slama,
can I just ask you because I know you’re covering the Trump
transition for the Wall Street Journal and you’ve been breaking
so much news, Musk goes ahead of Trump on this funding bill publicly
and significantly so. He is a leader here in the charge
against it. 70 posts, 12 hours between his first post
and Trump finally weighing in. How risky of a game is Musk playing? It’s incredibly risky, and amazingly,
his advisers have been remarkably silent on why it took Donald Trump
or even, Vice President elect, JD Vance
so long to weigh in on this issue. Whereas Elon Musk,
as you were saying, was tweeting all day long about this, as was Vivek Ramaswamy,
the two men who are leading the Department of Government Efficiency,
coming into this next administration. And so it is very unusual
to see close advisors to Donald Trump, getting ahead of him on critical issues
like this. but also, you know, whether or not
there was any coordination in advance, you know, advisors told us that they did
kind of receive Trump’s blessing, that they were on the same page,
but they really couldn’t give much more of an explanation as to why Elon Musk
was just kind of going, full throated, you know, rejection of the bill
so early on without us hearing from Trump. And so he is definitely playing
a risky game. Donald Trump typically likes
to kind of be his own spokesman. We know that just
I happened to cover his first white House. And so we saw that play out. And it’ll be interesting
to see how this plays out too. I mean, Karen, it will be interesting
because, you know, it. You know, when Icarus flew too close to the sun,
you know, but but this is a
this is a very fascinating moment. Right? You’ve got chaos
as he was describing it on Capitol Hill. Chaos. Right. Complete and utter disarray. And that utter disarray
is because of Elon Musk, because of Elon Musk
and because of Donald Trump. And I’m going to say something
that I’m predicting right now. I’m going to get to say maybe 100 times
before Donald Trump is out of office. We told you so. You know, Democrats predicted that if you
I mean, as you point out, Nikki Haley predicted that Donald Trump was going to bring chaos
and to the point that was just made. So you have two unelected
corporate billionaires basically driving the decision
about what’s going to happen with our budget, whether or not to default
and to whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, whether or not
to, you know, missed the deadlines and we won’t have air traffic controllers
and we won’t have, you know, all the government functions. And, you know, I have to believe that
Americans are asking themselves, wait a second,
that’s not we what we voted for. And Trump has already said
he doesn’t know he can do the one thing that they that they did
say they wanted, which was lower costs.