CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump has long supported House Speaker Mike Johnson — hosting him on election night, taking him to the Army-Navy college football game last weekend and endorsing him privately despite conservative complaints about the House’s actions.

That’s why it stunned many Republicans when Elon Musk — with Trump’s approval — helped soften Johnson’s short-term government funding deal on Wednesday afternoon, unleashing a flurry of social media posts starting early in the morning, calling the deal “criminal.”

Trump then threatened to defy any Republican who voted for him in a 2026 primary. And he added a further complication by demanding that the debt ceiling – a tool Republicans have used for years to pressure Democrats to cut spending – be lifted or eliminated entirely before he takes office. With funding running out at the end of Friday night, Trump’s last-minute demands brought the government dangerously close to a shutdown.

Mar-a-Lago’s broadsides left Republican lawmakers wondering, given communications between the president-elect and the House speaker, why it took until the last moment for the dramatic split between Trump and Johnson to emerge and the deal to go through fall apart.

“It’s all very strange,” one Republican lawmaker told CNN. “This was completely avoidable.”

On Thursday evening, Trump again backed Johnson as he tried to push a different plan aimed at satisfying the Republican standard-bearer’s demands. The 24-hour whiplash underscored both Johnson’s weakness and Musk’s openness to Trump. The bill, which would have extended federal funding for three months, raised the debt ceiling through 2027, extended the farm bill and provided $110 billion for disaster relief, failed with 38 Republicans voting against it.

The chaotic series of events has left House leadership reeling, and the episode has raised questions about how Republicans on Capitol Hill will function with a slim majority and competing factions when Trump takes office.

And now the Democrats who helped Johnson save his job last spring say they are helping the Louisiana Republican navigate his fractious conference.

Johnson was already close to reaching an agreement with congressional leaders on a short-term government funding measure when he sat in a private box with the president-elect at the Army-Navy game last weekend.

In a video captured from the game, Trump is seen talking to Johnson, new Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

According to people familiar with the discussion, Trump told Johnson he wanted a full-year spending bill — not a short-term fix — and that he wanted the debt limit to be part of that deal.

“He wanted everything to be clear,” a source with knowledge of the conversation told CNN, alluding to Trump’s desire to begin his term with the more contentious spending battles in the rearview mirror so Congress could focus on implementing his agenda.

At the game, the source said, Johnson tried to appease the president-elect without promising to meet those specific demands – while acknowledging that there was nowhere near enough time to reach agreement on the various bills , which include laws governing the government’s annual spending. known as “Omnibus”.

Later in the week, sources said Trump asked allies and advisers about what they saw as the pros and cons of a short-term funding measure or the longer-term bill, which he began publicly calling for on Wednesday.

“It started when the text came out and some details were announced. Up until that point, he was still trying to understand the pros and cons of short-termism versus long-termism,” a Trump adviser told CNN. “When the text of the law came out and the essentials were reported, he wanted to get involved.”

Throughout Wednesday, Trump and Musk discussed their opposition to the bill – even before Musk began violently attacking the X package. Both agreed that it gave too much to the Democrats and was too expensive. Sources close to Trump insist that Musk was in lockstep with the president-elect when he accepted the proposal and anyone who might have voted for it, a sign of his power over the president-elect.

Vance has been tasked with being Trump’s eyes and ears on the Hill and is handling most of the discussion with Johnson. On Wednesday evening, the vice president-elect was seen entering the speaker’s office with Republican leadership while Trump enjoyed dinner with Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at his Mar-a-Lago resort. According to a source familiar with the discussions, Trump has called lawmakers on the matter but is leaving Vance – who has been an Ohio senator for a few weeks – to handle the nitty-gritty behind closed doors.

Trump’s allies at Mar-a-Lago had reached out to the speaker and his team in recent weeks, making clear the president-elect’s desire to address the debt limit before taking office.

But his position was not widely known. According to several Trump allies, advisers and GOP officials, the conventional wisdom has been that they would tackle the debt ceiling as part of upcoming talks on a spending bill in March or a partisan package to implement Trump’s immigration and energy policies.

And even in conversations a week ago, three sources suggested that the debt ceiling was not on anyone’s radar, with at least one Trump ally telling CNN, “That’s going to be a June topic.” Such a politically toxic debate on the To Putting the lame-ducks on the Do list was a plot twist.

“The addition of the debt ceiling discussion has certainly added a new element,” a Trump adviser told CNN.

The transition did not respond to a request for comment. CNN has contacted Johnson’s office.

Trump, as he and his aides have said, wants to begin the new Congress and his second term with a clean slate — and without the ability for Democrats to retain a bargaining chip that could dilute their agenda.

Emboldened by razor-thin majorities in both chambers, Trump believes Republicans will be in a stronger position to demand deeper spending cuts in next year’s negotiations.

“Mar-a-Lago has expressed a lot of doubt about pushing the debt limit until next year,” a source involved in the talks told CNN, referring to the Palm Beach membership club where Trump and his advisers have developed political positions behind closed doors. “Why are we leaving something that will be a lever for Democrats in place for next year?”

As recently as Wednesday afternoon around 1 p.m., House Republican leaders told their Republican colleagues that they were “positive” about having the votes to pass the negotiated deal, according to multiple sources close to the negotiations. Many Republican lawmakers weren’t happy with the measure — especially given the rushed timeline — but it seemed like they were willing to accept it.

However, a whip count made clear that Johnson did not have the Republican support he needed to pass the measure with Democratic help.

One Republican cited a lack of communication between Johnson’s office and rank-and-file members as a reason the leadership disagreed with the conference’s venue. For example, lawmakers were surprised to find out it included a raise for themselves.

“We knew what 92% of this was going to look like long in advance, but the last 8% was stupid,” Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Meuser told CNN.

The bill may have been “already dead,” as one Republican lawmaker put it, by midday Wednesday, but Musk’s megaphone ensured it was buried.

Social media posts from Musk and Donald Trump Jr. led to a wave of angry phone calls to lawmakers’ offices.

At around 3 p.m., a Republican source described the situation as “collapsing.” And Johnson’s problems quickly evolved from internal complaints about the funding bill to big, public questions about his future as speaker. On Thursday morning, one of the House’s most vocal conservatives, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, appeared to have dropped her support for the Louisiana Republican and openly raised Musk’s unlikely situation as speaker.

Several frustrated Republicans told Johnson and his leadership team that they should have voted Wednesday when they had the votes, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

“We will regroup and find a different solution,” Johnson told reporters after the vote failed on Thursday. “So hang in there.”