Trump Responds To Elon Musk's Criticism Of 'Massive Spending Bill'

Forbes Breaking News

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump responded to Elon Musk's criticism of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00Mr. President, Elon Musk, in a television interview, criticized the one big, beautiful bill,

00:06saying he was disappointed it didn't cut enough, essentially, that it undercut the Doge efforts.

00:11What's your reaction to that?

00:12Well, my reaction's a lot of things.

00:14Number one, we have to get a lot of votes.

00:16We can't be cutting.

00:19You know, we need to get a lot of support, and we have a lot of support.

00:23We had to get it through the House.

00:25The House was—we have no Democrats.

00:27You know, if it's up to the Democrats, they'll take the 65 percent increase.

00:30You know, if that doesn't get approved, this country is going to have a 65 percent increase in taxes

00:35and lots of other problems, big problems, almost bigger than that.

00:40But we'll have a 65 percent increase as opposed to the largest tax cut in the history of our country.

00:48We will be negotiating that bill, and I'm not happy about certain aspects of it,

00:53but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it.

00:55That's the way they go.

00:56That's very big.

00:56It's the big, beautiful bill.

00:58But the beautiful is because of all of the things we have.

01:01The biggest thing being, I would say, the level of tax cutting that we're going to be doing.

01:08We're going to make people really be able to—we'll have one of the—we'll have the lowest tax rate

01:13we've ever had in the history of our country,

01:15and tremendous amounts of benefit are going to the middle-income people of our country,

01:19low- and middle-income people of our country.

01:23So we're going to see what happens, because the Senate, as you know, is negotiating with us,

01:27and they have to then go back to the House.

01:29And, you know, it's got a way to go.

01:31But I have to say, Speaker Johnson and Thune have done an incredible job.

01:37John Thune has done a fantastic—leader Thune—a fantastic job.

01:41And they're working together with me and others.

01:44And I think we have an amazing—if we pull this off—remember, we have zero Democrat votes,

01:49because they're bad people.

01:50There's something wrong with them.

01:51You know, they're—they'll let people pour into our country.

01:55Single biggest problem is we had 21 million people pour into our country,

01:59probably higher than that, and the people that weren't supposed to be here.

02:03And many of those people are bad—murderers, drug dealers, the mentally insane.

02:09They were closing mental institutions all over the world, not South America.

02:13All over the world, they're coming into our country, and we're getting them out.

02:16And we're having a hard time, because some judges aren't making it very easy for us.

02:20And it's tough enough.

02:21They approved that.

02:22They allowed that to happen to our country.

02:24We don't have one Democrat vote.

02:26And if I were a Democrat, I'd be voting for this bill,

02:30and I'd get elected to any position I want as a Democrat.

02:33They're crazy.

02:34They're voting for a 65 percent tax increase.

02:37And they're only doing it for hatred.

02:39They're not doing it for any reason.

02:41They know it's terrible.

02:43Terrible politics, in my opinion.

02:44But—so we have no Democrat votes.

02:46That means we have to get almost all Republican votes.

02:49And I think we're very close to doing that.

02:51I think it'll be very successful.

02:53Yep.

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