Washington: Elon Musk has never been elected to office. President-elect Donald Trump has not tapped him to serve in any role inside the government. Until the July assassination attempt, he never even publicly supported Trump.

But this week, critics of the world’s richest man say he attained a new title: “shadow president” of the United States.

President-elect Donald Trump, from left, Trump’s pick for the planned Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk and Vice President-elect JD Vance attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy.Credit: AP

In a matter of hours on Wednesday, Musk wielded his powerful X account to pressure House Republicans to torpedo a spending bill that would have kept the federal government open for three months. Musk’s rapid-fire messages - which included numerous false claims about the contents of the spending bill - ricocheted through Washington, where some legislators reported their phone lines were ringing all day with calls from constituents who saw the posts.

More than 12 hours after Musk’s first post on the subject, Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance also put out a statement opposing the legislation, and House Republicans scrapped the deal.

Musk kept posting throughout the day on Thursday, as House Republicans scrambled to come up with an alternative. Ultimately, House Republicans appended a two-year debt ceiling hike - a key demand of Trump’s - to a slimmed-down version of the original bill that Musk had decried as “one of the worst bills ever written”, though the cost difference between the two was marginal.

But the second Trump-backed measure went down to a broad and swift defeat in the House on Thursday evening, raising the chances of a shutdown beginning at 12.01am Saturday (4.01pm Sunday AEDT).

Musk’s outsize role in sending the federal government careening toward a potential shutdown before Christmas has alarmed Democrats, academics and watchdog groups, while some Republicans said his intervention was uninformed.

The tech billionaire’s swift accumulation of political power has sparked criticism that the incoming Trump administration will function like an oligarchy, with Musk pushing for policies that will further enrich him and his companies. Trump has named Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chairs of an outside group dubbed the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which will advocate for vast cuts to federal spending.

The outrage reverberated on X, which Musk owns and where “President Musk” became a trending topic. Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren posted an AI-generated image that depicted Musk operating a Trump puppet.........

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