The US has called Elon Musk the “shadow president” of the US after he interfered in the process of passing a bill to finance the federal government.
“Elon Musk has never been elected to office. President-elect Donald Trump did not recruit him to work in the government. Before the July assassination attempt (attempt to assassinate Trump – ed.), he had never even publicly supported Trump. But this week, critics of the world's richest man say he has acquired a new title: “shadow president” United States”, – the article says.
As the newspaper reported, Musk used his influential social media account X last week to “put pressure on Republicans in the House of Representatives to torpedo a spending bill that was supposed to keep the federal government running for three months”.
According to the report, Musk's posts, which “contained a series of false claims” about the bill, quickly spread through Washington.
The lawmakers noted that “their phone lines were jammed all day with calls from constituents” who had seen Musk's posts. According to The Washington Post, about 12 hours after Musk's first post, President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect James David Vance also opposed the bill, after which Republicans in the House of Representatives abandoned it.
Democrats have expressed concern that the chaos on Capitol Hill “is just a harbinger of things to come under the Trump administration”.