Top House Dem won't 'welcome back' Musk over Trump feud

If Elon Musk had any thoughts of pivoting back to the Democrats after his high-profile dust up with President Donald Trump on Thursday, House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries likely ended them on Friday.

Musk has been a vocal critic of the "big, beautiful bill" over its spending provisions, advocating for steeper cuts and the perils of continued deficit spending. The dispute, however, became personal on Thursday, with Musk exchanging tit-for-tat social media barbs with the president and going so far as to claim the administration had not released the Epstein files due to Trump's presence in the documents. Pressed on the public rift between the pair, Jeffries suggested it presented an opportunity to stop Trump's priority legislation and that he wouldn't "welcome back" Musk to the fold

"The opportunity that exists right now is to kill the GOP tax scam,” Jeffries told reporters. "It’s legislation that we have been strongly opposed to, and uniformly opposed to, from the very beginning," he told reporters. "It snatches food out of the mouths of hungry children. And it rewards billionaires and donors in ways that are fiscally irresponsible."

"Same answer," he retorted, when pressed on the prospect of Musk re-embracing his party. Formerly a supporter of the Democrats, Musk embraced the MAGA movement after the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pa., and became the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

His push to cut waste, fraud, and abuse earned him the Democrats' ire, especially as he targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).