Ring-Kissing, Lawsuits and a Looming Shutdown
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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
So Donald Trump is now officially against passing the funding bill that would avoid a government shutdown four days before Christmas.
Weeks before his inauguration, President-elect Trump is pushing the federal government toward a shutdown.
Look at the list of CEOs who are either shelling out big money or meeting with Trump in person or both. We're talking about CEOs from TikTok, Google, Apple, Netflix.
The country's corporate titans are flocking to Mar-a-Lago to curry Trump's favor.
Today, ABC News agreed to give $15 million to Donald Trump's president.
And a major media company has capitulated to Trump's legal strategy of suing those who cross him. To make sense of all of this, I gathered three of my colleagues, senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman, congressional reporter Katie Edmondson, and financial columnist and the founder of Dealbook, Andrew Ross Sorkin. It's Friday, December 20th. Everyone. Welcome to The Roundtable. Katie, Maggie, Andrew, thank you all for making time for us. Thank you for having us.
Thanks, Michael.
Okay, let's jump right in. We are talking to the three of you at a very live news moment, 12.33 p.m. on Thursday, with a government shutdown looming. And I mention that timing because events could change after we tape. There could, for example, be a deal to try to avert a shutdown. But I think shutdown is where we need to start this conversation. And unlike many of the threatened partial or full government shutdowns that have happened over the past couple of years, this one kind of came out of nowhere, right? Does that feel like an accurate statement? Who here wants to jump in? Katie?
I can pick it up because I've been through many of these spending fights now, and the last few of them have been fairly anticlimactic. They've made it through the Senate to President Biden's desk really without much drama. And I think we generally had an idea that that was going to happen again this time. Mm-hmm. And of course, that's not what happened. Instead, when Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, unveiled the spending bill that he negotiated with Democrats, it included a litany of other measures, including $100 billion in disaster aid for the American Southeast. But it also had all of these other provisions that were added to it. And so when this bill was unveiled, there was a wide swath of Republicans in the House who were furious with it. And then, of course, we had Elon Musk weigh in, and that really began sort of the final death rattle for this bill.
Andrew, pick up where Katie leaves off. Elon Musk, not traditionally a participant in congressional spending bill negotiations. Why is he involved, and what exactly does he do?
This, to me, is the beginning of the movie that we've all been waiting to see and wonder how the drama plays out, which is to say that we've all seen Elon Musk around the table with President-elect Trump.
Literally.
But we haven't really known. In fact, I think a lot of people have been skeptical about just how much power he may or may not have. Well, he used it, and we saw it.
Just describe what he did and what it ends up doing, and then Maggie will get to how Trump responds to that.
He took to Twitter, or I should say X, and said this bill should not pass. Full stop. His partner in Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy, also took to Twitter and to TikTok. after having read 1,500-plus pages of the bill and said this bill should not pass.
For the reasons Katie suggested, that suddenly it's larded up with stuff?
Because of exactly how much it was larded up with stuff, specifically pointing out that Congress was effectively giving itself a pay raise for the first time in 14 years. There was what they call pork in this bill. And... Elon Musk said, no, Moss, we're not doing this. And Trump said, we're not doing this.
Maggie, who's leading who by the nose here? I mean, Elon Musk does all that stuff. What does the president-elect do?
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