Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called out Republicans for acquiescing to billionaire Elon Musk’s demands to thwart a bipartisan spending bill that was needed to fend off a government shutdown this weekend.
In his comments, Sanders derided Musk — who is co-leading president-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — as an authoritarian oligarchic.
The bipartisan spending bill that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) negotiated with Democrats would have funded the government through March. However, after Musk urged GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, Johnson, sensing he wouldn’t have enough support from his own party, scrapped the legislation, and put up a new spending bill without Democratic Party input. That bill also failed to pass after Democrats in the House voted against it, with dozens of Republicans opposing the bill, albeit for different ideological reasons.
Musk’s influence within the Republican Party is so inviolable that some in the GOP have actually called for him to replace Johnson as Speaker of the House. Musk and Trump have said that Republicans who do not support the spending bills they endorse should be primaried out of their seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Musk has also said that he’s not opposed to shutting down the government until Trump is inaugurated in mid-January.
“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is threatening to unseat elected officials if they do not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays,” Sanders noted in a recent social media post. “Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?”
In an earlier post, Sanders derided Musk as being an oligarch who Republicans adhered to.
“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected,” Sanders wrote. “Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work.”
Hours after Sanders’s comments, Musk signaled his support for a neo-fascist political party in Germany’s February elections.
In a post on his social media site X, Musk endorsed Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far right, anti-immigrant and antisemitic party that is gaining popularity among conservative Germans.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” the billionaire wrote.
Musk has previously endorsed other far right figures in Europe, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and United Kingdom Reform party leader Nigel Farage.
Musk has tried to normalize AfD’s views in the past, claiming they “don’t sound extremist” to him and questioning if he was “missing something.”
AfD is vehemently anti-immigration, particularly with regard to Muslims, calling for a “net zero” number of immigrants entering Germany in the coming years. Leaders of the party have repeatedly made racist and antisemitic statements, emphasizing a need to return to a German “identity” and pushing other white nationalist views; AfD leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has described immigration to the country as an “invasion of foreigners” that he and his party intend to fight off.
The party has also called for changes to how Nazi Germany is depicted in historical settings, such as monuments, schools and museums, with Gauland once minimizing the country’s Nazi history as being no more than “just a speck of bird’s muck.” Other AfD members have denied Nazi wrongdoing, including by describing the Holocaust as a “myth.”
Musk’s public support for AfD is just the latest example of the billionaire sharing reactionary viewpoints on X. Musk has, for example, called for the deportation of protesters utilizing the First Amendment to express views he disagrees with. He has also promoted antisemitic, anti-Muslim, transphobic and other bigoted content on his profile, and has shared content denying the Holocaust.
Novelist and political commentator Patrick S. Tomlinson has said that Musk’s support for AfD is illuminating.
“The AfD is Germany’s neo-Nazi party,” Tomlinson wrote on Bluesky. “They are anti-immigration, anti-EU, and unapologetically pro-Putin. The German courts have labeled the entire party extremist. Elon Musk has gone fully mask off.”
Commentator Paul Krugman also weighed in on Musk’s latest endorsement, noting that the billionaire’s statement was “obviously where he was going.”
When it comes to fascist sentiments, Musk “isn’t hiding it at all,” Krugman added.
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