New phone, who dis?
Tech mogul Elon Musk changed his cellphone number and stopped returning Mike Johnson’s texts after throwing a titanic fit about the costs included in Republicans’ massive tax-and-spending bill, the House speaker revealed on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out Wednesday.
“I sent him a long text message, and then his phone number changed, because after the blow-up, something happened with his,” Johnson told The Post’s Miranda Devine about the bitter billionaire abruptly leaving their chat — right after President Trump and Musk’s bromance went belly-up.
Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington. Subscribe here!
“[Later I] realized I was sending it out into the ether somewhere and he never read it, so I look forward to meeting with him in person,” the speaker said of his former texting buddy. “We got to make that right.”
Though Musk didn’t even give him a heads up before ghosting him, Johnson noted that didn’t stop him from reaching out multiple times through a third party. He was also hopeful that Musk and Trump could mend fences.
“Frankly, I think the president was of that mind as well, but there’s some tension there,” the House GOP leader said of the two billionaires burying the hatchet.
Musk parted ways with the Trump administration at the end of May, then a few days later raged publicly about the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, grumbling over its impact on the deficit in particular. Deficit reduction had been Musk’s top priority when pulling the strings on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The tech tycoon’s efforts to tank the megabill were to no avail, however, as Republicans wrangled it through Congress and Trump signed the landmark bill into law on July 4.
The next day, Musk, who had blasted the bill as “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination,” announced his plans to launch a centrist “America Party” alternative to the two-party system.
Trump swiftly responded, calling Musk’s idea “ridiculous.”
“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump lamented on Truth Social.
Johnson told Devine that there was likely “a multitude of factors” behind the Trump and Musk split, and that he’d “let everybody else judge the motivations behind it.”
“But clearly, [Musk] got unhappy in a very short period of time,” Johnson acknowledged. “I mean, he generally knew what we were doing, and we talked about it. I mean, he knew for months, many months we worked on this, and I was keeping him apprised of it.”
“The final product maybe didn’t meet all of his expectations in terms of what we’re doing, for example, with electric vehicles and the Biden mandates and all of that,” Johnson told Devine. “But there are other things as well.”
“But look, I let other people judge that. I’ve got to keep my eyes on the prize and keep going forward, and I’m trying to be a peacemaker in all of it.”
The House Republican leader admitted that he shares Musk’s deep concerns about the rapidly growing national debt but stressed that “we can’t solve the problem overnight” and noted that Republicans are planning to pass rescission packages, which enable them to claw back previously allocated government spending.
Full episode
“Look, Elon is a genius,” the speaker said. “He does things that I can’t even fathom, but one of his fields of expertise was not necessarily crafting legislation, right?”
Concerning his current relationship with Elon, Johnson told Devine, “I’ve got nothing against Elon, obviously.”
“I have great respect for what he’s done, and I just want him to fully understand what we’re doing and remind him of the strategy. This is a long-term play,” the Louisianan GOPer said.
“We can’t fix this stuff overnight, but we have a plan to do it, and I think that’s going to be pleasing to everybody who’s worried about our deficit and our debt.”
During last week’s Pod Force One episode, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave Devine a peek behind the curtains on POTUS’s relationship with the tech mogul.
“The president was very, very kind to him, and Elon had so much to offer us,” Wiles told Devine. “He knew things we didn’t know. He knew people and technologies that we didn’t know.”
“It was a great thing when it was a great thing,” Wiles reflected, “and had a very, I think, a very troublesome ending.”
