CNN Host Calls Out GOP Senator’s Absurd Elon Musk Claim: ‘That Can’t Be True’

CNN anchor Dana Bash on Sunday hit back at Sen. Bill Hagerty’s (R-Tenn.) claim that Elon Musk was “the only way we would even know” about the government funding plan after the billionaire trashed the deal on his X platform.

“I think as a senator voting I presume you do your best to read the bills that you’re voting on. I understand it was quite large at the beginning but to say that it was only Elon Musk that made people aware of what was in it, that can’t be true,” she told Hagerty, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

On Wednesday, Musk unleashed a storm of social media posts criticizing a bipartisan deal negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as a possible government shutdown loomed over Washington.

Donald Trump went on to echo Musk’s criticism, effectively killing the bill at the time, before a new version without a key ask from the president-elect ― a raise to the debt ceiling ― eventually passed the House and the Senate.

President Joe Biden later signed the bill to fund the government through March.

Bash noted that Trump didn’t publicly weigh in on the bill for more than 12 hours after Musk’s first post and “only did so” after Republicans were following the billionaire’s lead.

“So did Donald Trump only pick this fight because Elon Musk backed him into a corner?” she asked Hagerty.

“I certainly wouldn’t say that, and I say thank God Elon Musk bought Twitter, because that’s the only way we would even know what’s in this bill, otherwise the conspiracy between the government and Twitter would have continued and this would have all been covered up.” Hagerty replied.

“But the fact is that Elon Musk exposing this meant that every one of our offices was inundated with calls from our constituents.”

Hagerty said that Musk’s “transparency” helped make this happen and later clarified that he didn’t mean the billionaire alone made people aware of the bill.

“We’re all struggling to read it, to digest an over 1,500 page bill that we were literally given just hours to comb through. I was working through it. My staff didn’t sleep the night before. It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” he said.

“But I think the added weight of the American public understanding and the simple picture that Elon Musk put forward showing the size of the stack of what we originally presented. We started out with over 1,500 pages, we got it down to 120 pages.”