Hakeem Jeffries Declines to Say Whether Democrats Should ‘Embrace’ Musk

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday cautiously avoided saying whether Democrats should seize on Elon Musk’s public falling-out with President Donald Trump as an opportunity to forge political ties with the tech billionaire.

Musk and Trump clashed openly on Thursday over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget legislation, which is pending in the Senate after narrowly passing the House last week. Musk, aligning himself with the fiscally conservative wing of the Republican Party, criticized the Trump-backed legislation as rife with pork barrel spending and raised alarm over its potential to exacerbate the national debt, which is approaching $37 trillion.

In a heated social media exchange, Musk accused Trump of being associated with Jeffrey Epstein, a claim Trump has long denied. The president fired back by saying that public support for Musk was “wearing thin,” and suggesting that the federal government should terminate contracts with Musk’s businesses as a cost-saving measure.

Asked Friday whether Musk’s break with Trump could create an opening for Democrats to align with the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, Jeffries shifted the topic to the party’s efforts to defeat the budget bill.

“The opportunity that exists right now is to kill the GOP tax scam,” Jeffries told reporters at his weekly press conference. “It’s legislation that we have been strongly opposed to, and uniformly opposed to, from the very beginning.”

Pressed on whether Musk should be “welcomed back” to the Democratic Party, Jeffries punted again.

“Same answer,” he said.

At another point of the event, Jeffries said that he has not been involved in any discussions about whether Musk should be called to testify before House committees.

“I haven’t had conversations with members of the relevant committees, which presumably could include Budget, Ways and Means, Judiciary, or Oversight,” Jeffries said. “Right now we’re focused on killing the bill.”

The congressman’s cautious remarks reflect the complications Democrats could face should they choose to engage Musk, who has spent recent months spearheading Trump’s agenda to rapidly downsize the federal workforce and root out fraudulent and wasteful spending.

Congressional Democrats have strongly opposed those efforts. They accused the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of illegally gutting federal agencies, abolishing life-saving programs, and accessing sensitive data held by government systems.

Still, some Democrats argue that Musk’s influence is significant enough to justify efforts to reach out, especially now that he is publicly at odds with Trump.

“If [Joe] Biden had a big supporter criticize him, Trump would have hugged him the next day,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents parts of Silicon Valley and previously worked as an attorney for tech companies, posted Thursday on X, the social media platform owned by Musk.

“When we refused to meet with [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], Trump embraced him and won,” he said. “We can be the party of sanctimonious lectures, or the party of [Franklin D. Roosevelt] that knows how to win and build a progressive majority.”