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Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, on Sunday compared tech mogul Elon Musk to a “prime minister,” praising Musk for speaking out against an early version of a stopgap funding bill last week.
“It’s kind of interesting,” Gonzales said during an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. It feels like as if Elon Musk is our prime minister.”
Gonzales added that he spoke with Musk “a couple of times” during a chaotic week for House Republicans as GOP leadership scrambled to pull together a package to fund the government that would garner support from a majority of the House GOP caucus.
Gonzales voted against the final version of a continuing resolution that passed the House late Friday night and was later signed Saturday by President Joe Biden. The package funds the government at current levels through March 14 and includes a one-year farm bill and $100 billion in disaster aid.
Gonzales continued to praise Musk’s influence on the funding process, even as moderator Margaret Brennan pointed out that Musk has not been elected to any formal position in the U.S. government.
“Well, unelected, but, I mean, he has a voice, and I think a lot of —large part of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people,” Gonzales said.
Musk was one of President-elect Donald Trump’s biggest supporters ahead of the November presidential election, spending a quarter of a billion dollars on outside efforts to boost his campaign.
Last week, Musk was outspoken against a government funding deal negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., days before a Dec. 20 deadline to avert a government shutdown.
Musk called the bill “one of the worst bills ever written,” wrote “this bill should NOT pass” and called for Republicans to shut down the government instead of voting for the continuing resolution.
In a span of two days, he voiced his opposition to the bill more than 100 times on X, the social media platform he owns.
Shortly after Musk started speaking out against the bill, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance released their own statement against the bill, tanking already wavering support for the bill among congressional Republicans.
And days later, when GOP congressional leaders released the text of a new continuing resolution one-tenth the size of the first bill, Musk praised the size of the second bill in a post that Gonzales himself reshared.
At a Turning Point USA event in Arizona, Trump downplayed concerns that Musk is usurping control from the president-elect.
“No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said.
“And I’m safe. You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump added about Musk, who was born in South Africa.
Alexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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