‘The View’: Why Whoopi Goldberg & Joy Behar Think Trump Is ‘Scared’ of Elon Musk

Amanda Bell June 4, 2025, 11:41 am

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For the first “Hot Topic” of the day on Wednesday’s (June 4) edition of The View, the cohosts got into the subject of Elon Musk‘s disdain for Donald Trump‘s budget package, which he calls the “Big Beautiful Bill.” In the lively chat, both Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar concluded that Trump is still scared of Musk, even after he left his role as the head of the “Department of Government Efficiency” a.k.a. “DOGE.”

Goldberg began the discussion by invoking her newly-launched nickname for Trump, “Taco D,” and saying, “The guy who was hired to cut government spending — remember Elon Musk? — yeah, well, he pulled an all-nighter on social media, tearing into the so-called ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ … He shredded it. He slammed it as an outrageous, disgusting abomination, and called out Republicans who voted for it, writing that in November next year, we’ll fire politicians who betrayed the American people.” After rolling clips of people reacting to Musk’s dissent, Goldberg said, “Well, President Taco D has yet to respond. And I do wonder why Elon thinks people are going to listen now to him, because he just spent several months destroying people’s lives.”

After Behar noted that Musk has high favorability among Trump voters, she said, “He’s hurting Trump in a way.”

Then, Sara Haines attempted to explain Musk’s reaction to the bill, saying, “I think part of his criticism is that he did cut all those things — poorly and haphazardly — but this bill undoes some of that. So it’s like, ‘What was I doing here?’ And I think it’s a flash point. This bill is a flash point for the fracture that already exists in the Republican Party between this populist national movement and the old-school conservatives, and they’re kind of battling it out with each other, as, ‘Do we want this small government, or do we want to spend and do things like the border in here?'” She then criticized one of the people who spoke in the reaction clip, Marjorie Taylor Green, saying, “She actually regrets voting for it, and it only went through by one vote… to come out and say out loud, like, ‘Oh, whoops, I missed that…'”

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“You have one job when you’re in Congress to do the work, to do the work and read the bill,” Sunny Hostin then said, earning applause. “At least read the synopsis!”

Hostin then went on to criticize Musk’s moves with DOGE, saying, “The damage that he did was really just incredible. He slashed 250,000 federal employees, more than 8,500 contracts, more than 10,000 grants, and his cutbacks on medical research… for the foreign aid cost 300,000 lives, mostly children. That’s the damage that Elon Musk did. So I don’t think anyone should be listening to him about anything!”

“A lot of us predicted that this split was going to happen,” Alyssa Farah Griffin added. “But what I’m most struck by is, how is Elon Musk surprised that nobody, including Trump, cares about deficits? Donald Trump ran on a lot of things. There were a lot of things he said he was going to do. He never said he was going to address the deficit. In fact, no one has actually really tackled it since Bill Clinton about 30 years ago. This is just not something that’s been a priority to politicians.”

“If you are going to ask any budgetary expert, you would have to cut entitlement, you have to cut defense spending, and you have to drastically raise taxes or some combination,” she continued. “These cuts were never actually going to do that. So it’s just kind of rich that he’s playing surprised today. … And by the way, Elon Musk is a huge Pentagon contract recipient.”

Griffin then offered a prediction that Musk could “tank” Trump’s legislative agenda, saying, “If Republicans decide, ‘Ooh, we don’t want to get on the wrong side of Elon,’ that’s what Donald Trump is banking at all on, and that’s kind of devastating for his administration. On the flip side, those Republicans, if you’re in a house district, you’re like, I’m afraid of Donald Trump, but Elon Musk, because of the dark money system we live in, he can come in and primary you by just pouring millions and millions into your race.”

“Elon knows the 411 on everything,” Goldberg then jumped in to say. “He knows how all this connects… So now suddenly, he’s like, ‘Harrumph!'”

“Trump should be afraid of him,” Behar said. “He has the receipts on the election.”

“I think he is afraid of him,” Goldberg agreed.

The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC