Speaker Johnson Responds to Elon Musk's Criticism of 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' Calls It 'Flat Wrong'

House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed his surprise on Tuesday at Elon Musk’s highly critical remarks regarding the much-anticipated "big, beautiful bill," a sweeping piece of legislation that recently cleared the House. Johnson, who described Musk as a "friend," told reporters the two had a "great conversation" about the bill just a day prior to Musk's public denunciation. "Elon and I left on a great note. We were texting one another — you know, happy texts," Johnson recounted, emphasizing his astonishment when Musk reversed course and blasted the bill in a series of incendiary social media posts.

Despite Musk’s assessment, the House Speaker remains confident in the bill’s necessity and scope. "I think he’s flat wrong," Johnson told reporters. "I think he’s way off on this, and I’ve told him as much." Johnson acknowledged, however, that addressing the ballooning national debt—now exceeding $36.2 trillion—would require far more than a single piece of legislation. "It took Congress decades to get us here. The Trump administration needs four years to do all this reform, not two years," Johnson explained. "The Biden administration, Biden-Harris, made such a disaster of every metric of public policy, it’s going to take us more than one bill to fix it all."

Musk, who ended his advisory role with the Trump White House last week, was markedly less optimistic. In a viral post, the tech billionaire lambasted the bill as a "disgusting abomination" and chastised lawmakers for burdening taxpayers with what he termed "massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending." Musk went on to echo calls by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, urging Senate Republicans to reject the measure and pursue deeper spending cuts that would not further balloon the national debt.

Republican leadership continued to rally behind the measure during their weekly press briefing, underscoring the bill’s appropriations for border security and law enforcement initiatives central to the Trump administration’s agenda. Both Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise pointed to recent incidents, including an antisemitic attack in Colorado allegedly perpetrated by a foreign national, as evidence of urgent national security threats. "We need to go find the other Solimans and get them out of America," Johnson said, referencing the accused attacker, Mohamed Soliman, an Egyptian national facing allegations of attempted violence in Boulder, Colorado.

The passage of the "big, beautiful bill" in the House sets the stage for an intense standoff in the Senate, where GOP senators have already begun expressing skepticism in the wake of Musk’s criticisms. As President Donald Trump pushes for a July 4 deadline for final approval, all eyes are now on Senate Republicans to decide the fate of a bill that has sharply divided conservatives—even among its most high-profile supporters.