After Elon Musk helped derail a bipartisan spending bill with misinformation, Rep. Richie Neal made no effort to hide his frustration. The Massachusetts Democrat — the ranking member on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee — asked, “Can you imagine what the next two years will be like if every time that Congress works its will, and then there’s a tweet, or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”
The billionaire apparently wasn’t pleased with the congressman’s comments, declaring soon after that he would soon “be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jacka–.”
Whether Musk is aware of this or not, Neal is already widely seen as a moderate, and there’s no reason to believe a primary rival backed by the world’s wealthiest individual would fare any better against the longtime lawmaker.
But in the case of Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a primary challenge apparently isn’t good enough for the billionaire: Musk wants her to be kicked out of Congress altogether.
As CNBC reported, at the heart of the story is a change made to the stopgap spending bill designed to prevent a government shutdown last week.
House Democrats Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut say their Republican colleagues in Congress caved to the demands of Elon Musk, sinking a bipartisan government funding bill that would have regulated U.S. investments in China.
In the original, bipartisan spending agreement — the one that Musk helped kill — there was a provision designed to restrict U.S. investments in China, specifically related to investments in the artificial intelligence and technology sectors.
When the legislation was rewritten, Republican took this provision out for reasons GOP officials haven’t fully explained. Ostensibly, the party was looking to make the bill cheaper, but this measure cost effectively nothing.
In a series of online items, McGovern complained that the removed provision “would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America.” The Massachusetts Democrat added, “But Elon had a problem.”
McGovern went on to write, “His bottom line depends on staying in China’s good graces. He [Musk] wants to build an AI data center there too — which could endanger U.S. security. He’s been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders.” DeLauro went a bit further, writing a letter to congressional leaders questioning whether the change to the bill reflected some kind of behind-the-scenes corruption: Perhaps, the Connecticut Democrat alleged, the legislation was tweaked specifically to benefit Musk, who has, as DeLauro put it, “extensive” business interests in China. It was, to be sure, a provocative allegation. But the billionaire megadonor responded with an online item of his own, calling DeLauro an “awful creature” and saying that he believes the Democratic congresswoman “needs to be expelled from Congress!” For the record, members of Congress are allowed to raise concerns about possible corruption, just as they’re able to make allegations regarding prominent public figures. Whether the congresswoman’s allegations have merit or not, to suggest that an elected lawmaker be kicked out of office for criticizing a billionaire in ways he doesn’t like is, to put it mildly, unsettling.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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