Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed the Republican Party for abandoning Elon Musk and his DOGE efforts as he declared that ‘the Swamp has won.’ 

The former presidential hopeful torched the GOP after House Republicans approved President Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which significantly raises the US national debt and increases spending. 

Musk spoke out this week to condemn the bill for ‘undermining’ the work he put in at DOGE to cut government waste, saying his cost-cutting team is being treated like ‘whipping boys’ as their moves would essentially be canceled out by the bill. 

DeSantis quickly took Musk’s side in his falling-out with Trump, saying on X that the world’s richest man was hit with ‘attacks on his companies as well as personal smears to lead the effort on DOGE.’ 

‘To see Republicans in Congress cast aside any meaningful spending reductions (and, in fact, fully fund things like USAID) is demoralizing and represents a betrayal of the voters who elected them,’ he said. 

The governor then continued his attacks on Trump and his own party at a bill signing ceremony in Florida hours later, saying they sold out voters who gave them a landslide victory in November. 

‘We have a Republican Congress and to this day, we’re in the end of May, past Memorial Day, and not one cent in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress,’ he said. 

DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the 2024 presidential election and was a frequent critic of the president before he eventually endorsed him, didn’t hold back as he told Florida voters that the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ would hurt their wallets. 

‘Inflation is a tax. When your money becomes less valuable, that’s no different in outcome than if Congress were to simply just directly tax you,’ he said. 

‘It’s less transparent, it’s more indirect, but it’s having the same exact impact. And so, when they do deficit spending of $2 trillion and they say, ‘Well, you know, we don’t want to raise taxes,’ and I’m not arguing for that either, I’m arguing for lowering spending. 

‘But just understand that two trillion-dollar deficit is a tax on you.’ 

DeSantis said he was ‘frustrated’ by the way Trump has forged ahead with his legislative agenda since retaking the White House, implying that Musk was thrown under the bus by Trump as soon as it was politically convenient. 

‘You know, Elon Musk went into this DOGE effort, he was getting lampooned. I mean, like they’re firebombing his Tesla dealerships, media smearing him relentlessly, his business has suffered,’ the Florida governor continued.  

‘All this stuff because he basically said, ‘Look, we can’t keep doing this, and we need to moderate and reduce the amount of money that the federal government is spending.” 

The Republican is often floated as a potential candidate in the 2028 GOP primaries after his unsuccessful run for the White House in 2024, and he appeared to propose an early policy platform in his stunning rebuke. 

‘That’s one of the reasons why we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s another reason why we need term limits for members of Congress,’ he said. 

‘But I think what you’ve seen with how, and I kind of said this early on, that DOGE and Elon were on a collision course with the Swamp. 

‘And the question is, what would happen? And I don’t think there’s any question that DOGE fought the Swamp, and so far the Swamp has won. And that’s just unfortunate, but I don’t think you can look at this any other way.’ 

Musk also responded to the X post where DeSantis defended him, saying he ‘did my best’ after Trump moved to cancel out his DOGE cuts by proposing a huge spending increase. 

The billionaire made headlines with his stunning rebuke of Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ in an interview with CBS. 

The Tesla CEO spoke to the press before launching a SpaceX Starship into the stratosphere on Tuesday night and unleashed on Trump’s $3.8 trillion spending bill.

‘It undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,’ Musk bluntly said. 

‘I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it.’

Musk – who spoke to multiple outlets about the White House betrayal – went on to decry the treatment he and his baby-faced DOGE team had received.

‘DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,’ he told the Washington Post.

‘Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.’