The real risk to Trump's big bill won't come from Musk

With the bang of a wooden gavel, the House of Representatives gave Donald Trump the stunning victory he wanted after intimidating the hell out of any Republican congressmen or women who flirted with the idea of defying the president's wishes.

- JON SOPEL

You can only imagine that 3,000 miles east of Washington a man in Downing Street looked on with helpless envy, because this week has really been a tale of two cities.

In London, Keir Starmer has had to suffer the ignominy of his backbenchers shredding his authority by sticking two fingers up at him repeatedly as though he were some hapless supply teacher brought into an inner London comprehensive for the day. The MPs forced concession after concession over a welfare bill that has been so gutted that an extra £5bn will need to be found to stop the ballooning of our deficit.

While in Washington DC, the president’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” - the OBBB - will add a staggering, eye-popping, head-spinning, jaw-dropping, nausea-inducing three trillion dollars to the US deficit and yet lawmakers decided - without too many qualms - that keeping on Trump’s right side was more important than any considerations about the massive economic risks this legislation represents.

There was, it should be noted, a strong countervailing force in all this, and that was Elon Musk. The OBBB is what led to his and Trump’s nuclear-tipped spat, with the tech tycoon railing against its economic incontinence. Not only that, Musk threatened any Republican lawmaker who voted for it. And has threatened to set up a new political party to - in effect - destroy the Republicans.