Trump Responds to Elon Musk's Criticism, Says Administration "Will Be Negotiating" the Tax Bill

TIME

U.S. President Donald Trump is responding to Elon Musk's criticism of the Republican tax bill. After Musk said he was "disappointed" in Trump's "big beautiful bill," the president defended his agenda by talking about the delicate politics involved.

Transcript

00:00Yeah, Mr. 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 undercut the Doge efforts.

00:10What's your reaction to that? Well, reactions, a lot of things. Number one, we have to get a lot

00:15of votes. We can't be cutting, you know, we need, we need to get a lot of support and we have a lot

00:22of support. We had to get it through the House. The House was, we have no Democrats, you know,

00:27if it's up to the Democrats, they'll take the 65 percent increase. You know, if that doesn't get

00:31approved, this country is going to have a 65 percent increase in taxes and lots of other problems,

00:37big problems, almost bigger than that. But we'll have a 65 percent increase as opposed to the largest

00:44tax cut in the history of our country. We will be negotiating that bill and I'm not happy about

00:51certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it. That's the way they go. It's very

00:56big. It's the big, beautiful bill. But the beautiful is because of all of the things we

01:00have. The biggest thing being, I would say, the the level of tax cutting that we're going to be

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

01:12we've ever had in the history of our country and tremendous amounts of benefit are going to the

01:17middle income people of our country, low and middle income people of our country. So we're going to see

01:23what happens because the Senate, as you know, is negotiating with us and they have to then go

01:28back to the House and, you know, it's got a way to go. But I have to say Speaker Johnson and Thune

01:35has done an incredible job. John Thune has done a fantastic leader. Thune.

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