MSNBC’s Jen Psaki offered a blunt message as she looked ahead to next year’s government in the wake of Wednesday’s Donald Trump-induced mess in Congress: “Buckle up, everyone!”
“This is what it’s going to look like,” the former White House press secretary predicted on “Morning Joe” Thursday.
The president-elect on Wednesday threw a major spanner into a bipartisan spending bill negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), rejecting the deal and sending lawmakers scrambling as a deadline looms to keep the government open past Friday.
Trump spoke up after billionaire ally Elon Musk went on a social media spree against the package.
“Yesterday, the feeling in Washington was, this is done,” Psaki said. “It was a bipartisan agreement. This is done. Everyone’s packing up their offices, making their Christmas travel plans. And all of a sudden, it wasn’t done.”
She said it was reminiscent of Trump’s first term, “when the team at the White House would say something, and Trump would say something that contradicted it on Twitter, or X.”
“Now you have the owner of that platform as an additional person who may be contradicting what the plan is,” she added, referring to Musk, whom Trump tapped, along with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead a new non-government advisory group that’s supposed to slash public spending.
She said it amounted to a “challenging situation” for Johnson, “who, as you read the reporting, he was in a position where he was needing to explain to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy how government funding works.”
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“Buckle up, everyone,” she concluded. “This is probably what governing looks like in 2025.”
Check out her commentary below.