Turmoil here in Washington. The house speaker, Mike Johnson's, fight to avoid a government shutdown just hit a major snag as Donald Trump joined the conservative revolt against this funding bill. Our chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, is up on Capitol Hill and CNN's Kristen Holmes has details on all of Trump's latest dramatic moves. Manu, we're awaiting an update, first of all, from the house democratic leadership. But what's the latest on the hill, and is speaker Johnson in trouble?
Yeah. Trump's 11th hour demand wolf has sent Washington scrambling. They would look like they were on a glide path to pass a bill to keep the government open past Friday up until March 14th. But in 11th hour, Donald Trump has come out opposing the plan, bashing the deal that Mike Johnson cut with congressional leaders and contending that it should also include an increase to the national debt limit. Remember, the debt limit is an incredibly complex negotiation that typically takes months months to resolve.
Trump wants this off the table now. He says, why deal with it now when Joe Biden is in office, add it to what his congress is dealing with, and get it off the off their plate? He's also criticizing deals that Johnson cut in order to get Democratic support. Remember, in order to get this bill across a nearly divided house, he needs Democrats Democratic votes so Democrats have their own demands. That's been all part of this complex negotiation that's been happening behind the scenes for weeks.
But after Johnson as well as other congressional leaders put this deal out on Wednesday night, it was roughly 1500 pages. Many lawmakers revolted, particularly on the right, arguing they did not have time to review the plan, and people on the right were critical of Johnson's deal cutting. So where does this leave things now? Uncertain, Wolf. Democratic leaders have been huddling behind the scenes trying to figure out their strategy on how to proceed, whether to fight this or whether to try to cut a deal with this with the president-elect or with speaker Johnson.
That's why this moment right now will be critical. And we hear from Hakim Jeffries and his democratic leadership team, how do they plan to proceed, and how does the speaker of the house deal with this? On top of all this, on January 3rd is the day that he needs to be reelected speaker. He can afford very few defections in order to become the next speaker of the house, already at least 1 Republican member. Thomas Massie of Kentucky told me that he will not vote for him come January 3rd, which is 1 big reason why Wolf that a lot of this is uncertain at this moment.
How does Johnson navigate a position that Donald Trump has put him in against the wall, and how does he get the votes to avoid a shutdown? Huge questions at this moment in Washington.
We'll hear, shortly what Hakim Jeffries, the democratic leader, has to say. Kristin, you're with us as well. As you know, Trump has played an enormous role in all of this. What are you hearing? What's the latest on his part?
Yeah. And just really quickly to bounce off of what Manu was just saying, I mean, up until just a few hours ago, it seemed as the speaker Johnson was in the clear when it came to president-elect Donald Trump. Donald Trump has had nothing but glowing things to say about speaker Johnson, but this, of course, throws a wrench in all of this. Now what we saw today was essentially a drip, drip, drip of information coming from Elon Musk.
Kristen, I'm gonna interrupt for a moment. I wanna listen to what the Democratic leader Hakim Jeffries is saying.
Bipartisan agreement to fund the government, keep it open, and meet the needs of the American people. We reached a bipartisan agreement to provide disaster assistance to everyday Americans whose lives have been upended and turned upside down as a result of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, and other types of extreme weather events. We reached a bipartisan agreement to meet the needs of the American people and provide assistance to farmers, families, children, seniors, veterans, men and women in uniform, and working class Americans. House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made. House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans all across this country, House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse.
An agreement is an agreement. It was bipartisan, and there was nothing more to say. Thank you.
What about the deadline? Is that possible, mister mister Jeffries? What is speaker Alright.
That was the house, Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, making a very, very strong point. Wanna bring in our analysts to assess what's going on because the stakes right now here in Washington are enormous. Alex Thompson, what's your what's your understanding of this remarkable turnabout? Bipartisan agreement, Democrats and Republicans working together to keep the government operating, and all of a sudden, it collapses. Yeah.
This could foreshadow how the next 2 years and 4 years could go under Donald Trump because, clearly, it broke up broke apart in part because of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But I did find it really notable that a Hakim Jeffries did not mention Donald Trump. He clearly was not trying to say this is the part of the Donald Trump chaos or government. He blamed it all on house Republicans.
Brian Lanza, what do you think? Because the stakes, as I keep saying, are enormous right now. The government shuts down a lot of Americans. Millions of Americans are gonna suffer.
Certainly, millions of Americans are gonna suffer, but I think if you look at the standpoint for where president Trump is, is he feels that the CR is so loaded with so much pork, even more than enough pork that defeat all of Iowa. That's a concern, and and the the debt ceiling is another concern. You know, president Trump's being strategic on how he wants the lame duck to sort of benefit his administration. Certainly, dealing with the debt ceiling and dealing with, you know, a temporary spending in March becomes a challenge, and he wants to weigh in. And speaker Johnson's gonna do whatever president Trump says.
We've seen that at the time. He's speaker always acquiesces to what the president wants to do, and that's where in this situation. So he's breaking a deal, which is let's get used to it. President Trump, if he doesn't like the deal, it's and he's not involved in the deal. It's not a deal.
That's what we're doing.
But they gotta reach an agreement within the next 2 days. Otherwise, it's gonna collapse.
It it I think it's
as we know, Mike Johnson, he's a Republican. He accepted this pipe artist.
Yeah. And he's on the hook for it. I mean, his speakership is on the line. There are people that are conservatives that are very upset with the deal he's cut. There are people in the Twitter space, whatever that means, you know, which is the MAGA space that are very upset, and there's constituencies that are representative.
Clearly, speaker Johnson has a lot of work to do. He kept a lot of people out of the loop. He didn't completely tell the complete picture to president Trump of what the CR was gonna look like. And president Trump, the the the language has been made public. JD Vance and president Trump clearly have an objections to it.
They told the speaker the way in, and they think what it needs to take to fix, and they're being strategic. It is a smart thing to punt to punt a lot of these things to president Trump's, you know, term. It is a smart thing to try to deal with the debt ceiling now, but the pork that's being layered at at this right now is just too much for president Trump and too much for conservatives to swallow, and they're not gonna swallow it.
We just heard from JD Vance up on Capitol Hill. I wanna play a clip, what he just said.
What do you support a clean CR?
Well, what the president believes is we should support a clean CR so long as it contains a debt limit increase. That's the position of the president, and that's what we're gonna try
to push for.
Are you are you
supporting a government shutdown then?
Have a
good night, guys. Thanks.
Amisha, what do you think is going on right now?
A lot of horse trading. President-elect Trump wants to preside as though he is currently president. He is weighing very heavily on these decisions. With that being said, he also is not in love with speaker Johnson. This could be the act that gets them a new speaker.
And I think that he's walking him into that path. Make no mistake. Americans are gonna get hurt. Several Americans will get hurt from federal workers to those who aren't, who are waiting on SSI checks and things like that. We know that this is going to cause a major issue.
However, I think that he's willing to do it, 1, to prove a point, but also to ensure that there aren't any major, policy changes that happen before he is actually in the White House the 2nd time.
You think it could undermine speaker Johnson's reelection?
Potentially. Although, I don't know anybody besides speaker Johnson that could get the votes given, like, the slim margins. But, yes, it's definitely a risk. Also, a risk for president Trump is he'd be the 1st unelected president to be blamed for a government shutdown, which is what, you know, if this actually does go to a shutdown, he risks.
But that's assuming that they blame him because they do think it was very strategic that, to a point made earlier by you, actually, that Hakeem Jeffries came out and blamed the House Republicans. He didn't mention Donald Trump's name once. Once. And I think that that says something.
It's not just Donald Trump. It's Elon Musk Mhmm. Who's deeply involved in opposing this bipartisan deal that the speaker worked out. And Democratic congressman Boyle Brian, let me get your reaction. He posted this, and I'm quoting him now.
Seems like the real leader of the GOP isn't Donald Trump. The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk. He's now calling the shots.
It's a cute statement. He probably gets a couple of retweets, but we've seen this movie long enough to know that there's only 1 executive producer to the show, and it's Donald Trump. Elon is an actor. And what do executive producers do? They fire actors, and they hire actors.
That's the way the process is gonna go.
Because Elon Musk came out against this compromise bill first, and then Trump followed with his statement.
Sure. Of course. And and it's it's safe to assume that Elon most likely coordinated with president Trump. Do the balloon first. I'll follow-up.
Like, they're in coordinations right now, but it's also important to realize there's only 1 executive producer to the Donald Trump show, and that's Donald Trump.
I think that's true. And the secondary part of that is that it a lot of it plays into the whole Doge theory that he has. If he's saying that there is way too much pork in here, he can also have that conversation about things that need to get cut, a bloated government. He's gonna utilize that himself as well.
But it does speak I was gonna say, it does speak to inherent tension in their relationship. And that Elon not only is there
The relationship between who?
Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and he also has 1,000,000,000 and billions and billions in government contracts. And he has also been appointed to a huge position in Donald Trump's government. And when and he also is willing to say his mind. Donald Trump is too.
What happens when they disagree? And we actually don't know how this, you know, you said actor. We don't know how this, you know, bromance is gonna play out.
We we kinda do know. I would say this. You know, the Chinese have a saying, you know, you can't have 2 tigers live in 1 mountaintop. So we do know how this is gonna end. At some point, there's gonna be a conflict and there's 1 executive producer and there's 1 president and that's Donald Trump.
And Elon wasn't always with Trump from the very beginning. Elon is a new factor in the Trump space probably less than 2 and a half years, maybe 2 years into it. He's he's a bit character.
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance sharply criticized a deal to fund the federal government until ...