The Feud, with House Speaker Mike Johnson 6/6/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. One big, beautiful breakup. I don't know. Trump said more and then Elon said you're on the Epstein list. Elon Musk said bring it, basically. The most powerful man and the richest man in a very public clash. And House Speaker Mike Johnson on the sidelines of a feud between two congressional houses on the massive spending and tax cut legislation and in the thick of another. It's not personal. It shouldn't be personal. You know, I don't tell my friend Elon how to build rockets, and I wish he wouldn't argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it.

0:39The drama on social media and the drama in Congress. Plus... And finally, drumroll, please. U.S. job creation slowed last month, but not as much as we expected. We break down the numbers and what they mean with a whip of CNBC reporters like our pal Rick Santelli and Mike Santoli. I do think it's pretty close to the sweet spot in terms of monthly job gains. And experts from Nuveen's Sarah Malik on the markets. How the Fed going to think about it, it gives them a little bit of breathing room. They don't have to rush to cut rates. To Republican Doug Holtz-Akin. I don't see the Fed cutting anytime soon.

1:15And Democrat Katie Richards. A lot of the uncertainty that's created by the tariffs and other kind of chaotic management of the economy by the Trump administration is only going to start really impacting the labor market on a slower timeline. All that ahead. It is Friday, June 6, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq Market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan. Andrew is off today. All three of the major averages were down slightly yesterday, but week to date, all three of them are actually up for the week to date.

2:00So we'll see how things shape up on this Friday morning. Trump had a conversation yesterday with with President Xi Jinping. But, you know, that's way down here on the on the back burner. But intimated that the rare earth and minerals situation, that he had spoken to President Xi about it and that it was going to be handled in some way. I don't know. It was a friendly conversation. It was an hour and a half. I don't know what we can glean from that. But he didn't say, wow, we're never talking again. They plan to talk and meet. Xi invited him to China. and then he invited Xi to the United States.

2:46So there's... De-escalation. Maybe. That's the play for it this morning. On that front. A de-escalation. Last Friday, Elon Musk got a key to the city. Not the city, but he got that beautiful little key and it was all smiles. That was Friday. Today's Friday. So that was... So under a week's time. Under a week's time. Under a week's time. We'll talk about... We'll talk more, but let me tell you what happened. Because you may not have heard. A possible cooling of tensions between President Trump and Elon Musk after a bitter public feud yesterday. Politico reporting that White House aides has scheduled a call between the two men for today.

3:23For his part, Elon Musk responded positively last night to an ex-post from investor Bill Ackman, whose bill is everywhere now. Ackman said Musk and Trump should make peace for the benefit of the country and we're stronger together than apart. with Elon replying to that, you're not wrong. The genesis of yesterday's blow up appeared to be President Trump criticizing Musk's recent attacks on his signature tax and spending bill. And Musk unleashed a barrage of social media posts with one saying, without his help, Trump would have lost last year's election. Later in the afternoon, Trump threatened to cancel Musk's government contracts.

4:02For his part, Musk said that President Trump's tariffs would cause a recession in the second half of the year. And then he answered a post saying, we need a third party and we need to impeach Trump. And then, I don't know, Trump said more. And then Elon said, you're on the Epstein list. And that's - Trump canceled his contracts, his government contracts. And Elon Musk said, bring it, basically. You know, like - Yeah, make my day. Make my day, I think was what he said. And then said he was going to cancel the - It was shocking. I was saddened more than anything. President Trump is very, he hits back hard.

4:41And he's mercurial. And he's kind of, I mean, he's just kind of a badass. I mean, thin-skinned. And for him to look measured. I wonder where you were going with that. Well, for him to look measured yesterday takes something. But you've got the richest guy, the most powerful man in the world, theoretically, or hypothetically, And the richest man in the world. There's no accountability for the richest man in the world. I don't think anyone can say anything to Elon. You saw what he said to David Faber about advertisers. Maybe it was Andrew. Go F yourself. Yeah, go F yourself. So he's used to not having anyone tell him anything.

5:18I don't think I'd take that tack with the president of the United States necessarily. But it also makes me wonder, you know, I've defended Elon a lot. He's got a crazy person. You know, who knows? I don't know drugs. I don't know what goes on. What you said this morning. Well, I said, don't do drugs. Which was pretty happy. I said to someone yesterday, he has to get some bad window pain. No one knows window pain because they didn't live in the 70s. But it was LSD. But bad batches. I mean, that was crazy yesterday. That was. It was unwise, suboptimal, as you said. Suboptimal. That's my word now.

5:56But the Epstein thing. See, I think that is that's reckless. And I don't think he would know who's on that list. I don't think I'd say it if I didn't know. And if he was on that list, I think either Hillary or Biden or when the Democrats were in power, if they knew that, they would have used it. President Trump has done some of his own things where he said things where it's like, what? Oh, that's what I'm saying. To make him look measured is. But I think it's bad to throw someone. If you don't know, to make that allegation is. And I think if it really was, if the list exists and Trump's on it and people had possession of it over the last 12 years, it would be out by now, wouldn't it?

6:38Who knows? I mean, they tried to pee pee tapes. I mean, if he had Epstein concrete. He doesn't help his case by saying things like he might consider P. Diddy. You know what I'm saying? He'd get him off the hook. Speaking of P. P. Diddy. He did. This is a situation where I hope that I. Yeah, let's hope it calms down. And it did seem like that was coming from Elon Musk yesterday. You mentioned the Bill Ackman that he responded to. There was another one with a guy who only had like 134 followers saying, you know, knock it off. Chill out. You guys both need to walk away for a couple of days and come back.

7:13And Elon responded positively to that as well. This call set up for today is is good news. Look, this this took about thirty four billion dollars off of his own net worth. and even more from a quarter of a trillion off of them. SpaceX isn't publicly traded, but that would be the one where you would expect an even bigger impact if the government contracts go away on these things. And while you hope that they can calm things down, because this was unbelievable to watch yesterday, I can't imagine that President Trump is going to forget this, even if he forgives him. He can. This might have gone too far, but in the past, he's it's possible for him to do that.

7:54Whether whether this went. I just don't imagine they will have the same close right. Whether it's a bridge too far. I mean, that's really hard to come back from. But but yes, we we will see where this kind of plays out. Hopefully it'll be a little quieter today. Tesla shares instantly. Yeah, I think it was a quarter of a trillion. Yeah, it was. If you look at it right now, the stock down 17.8 percent for the week to date. That was all based on yesterday. Now, when I looked at this earlier today, it looked like it was indicated to open higher this morning. Yeah, 14 points or something. I was reading something today that suggested that the number of puts on this, the people taking bets on that, exploded yesterday to 4 million contracts.

8:32That's the highest since the 2020 pandemic. Yeah, and here it is this morning. That might all those things. Indicated up. Let's see, it might all need to be covered, right? All those shorts might need. Right, and maybe that's a swing to the downside to have all of those, that expectation. But, man, this was destructive in nature, self-destructive in nature. And nobody. But even if they do reconcile, it just makes you aware how, you know, they're both so impulsive at times. And, you know, you wonder how long would it be a sort of a you'd worry about the truce or the detente. Right. Russ Gerber, a very early backer of Tesla, said he sold some stock yesterday on this because he was concerned about it.

9:19Well, true. And because he thinks the board's not going to do its job and kind of rein Elon in when it comes to being on social media like this. We've seen this arise in the past, but this is obviously the largest and most visible battle on the front. Once again, I was like last Friday when we were played. I was outside, you know, and the sun sort of half asleep and things started happening. And then it just watching the the how it went from. Oh, wow. And one thing I will say, we've talked earlier about this, but. Trump mentioned yesterday, no one knew the inner workings of this bill better than Elon all along.

9:58And he never had a problem with it until this other stuff started happening. And I've said I got my own problems with the bill. You know, it's a great day to have Mike Johnson, the Speaker. The Speaker of the House. I don't know whether he talked directly to Elon. I know they were texting. I think they're supposed to have a phone call last night or today. I was thinking if we couldn't have the president or Elon Musk on the phone, this is the guy I'd like to speak to. Well, all week long we've been talking to Republican senators who have had their issues with the bill and questions about what's going to happen.

10:28Speaker Johnson is the one person who can kind of answer how the House will respond to what the Senate is doing right now. He's pretty. Louisiana is really not the Midwest, but he's got a Midwestern. He's calm, cool and collected. Yesterday he did put out a tweet defending this bill, too. I think he has taken it personally that Elon Musk has come after him and said that he's changed on some of these issues. But again, very measured guy. And, you know, an angry tweet from Mike Johnson doesn't rise to the level of a kind tweet from most of the rest of us. He was defending the bill yesterday. Apparently there's something happening at 8.30, too.

11:05And we have former Fed officials to talk about. But it's a big jobs number or an important jobs number. We'll see how big it is, whether it plays into that ADP report that we saw. Oh, my God. Don't blink. think. Walmart expanding deliveries by drone in the coming year. The company says that it plans to launch the option at 100 stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, Orlando and Tampa. That will make five states, including Arkansas, with drone deliveries. The machines have a range of up to six miles from the store. And so far, believe it or not, some of the most frequently delivered items include, OK, fresh fruit.

11:45I can get that pet food, even though it's kind of heavy, It would seem to have a drone carrying it. Ice cream. It'd be a milkshake. Yeah, by the time you get it to you, it'd be swished around. And eggs. So you've got to have a lot of faith that this is going to come in. And I guess if you are a frequent customer and you do it again, I would love to be able to get some of this stuff delivered to me. I'm a little concerned about all the drone traffic in the air with this stuff. Carrying heavy dog food or something. See, hard-boiled eggs, maybe. Yeah. Hey, it's impressive. If eggs are one of their most often delivered items along with ice cream, it means you must be fast and accurate.

12:24Bro, can you get some cannabis? Do you know whether they drop that off? Whoa. It seems so futuristic. It's kind of amazing. What a world. What a world. Coming up, how many of these, are they going to be everywhere? Like in the Jetsons? Yeah, and Amazon's doing it too. Although Amazon's latest thing is they're not talking about these automatic driving vehicles and a robot gets out and delivers it to you too. Are you going to be like this walking around outside? That's what concerns me. The idea of all these drones carrying heavy stuff. Right. Cheese will be next. Coming up, more on the breakup heard around the world and what House Speaker Mike Johnson knows about the Musk-Trump feud.

13:07And he responds to concerns about the national deficit, like from his fellow Republican colleague, Senator Ron Johnson. He'd like to cut, you know,$8 trillion overnight, some huge figure like that. So would I. We don't have the votes to do that. And if you did that that quickly, it would actually do real harm to the U.S. economy. So we have to do this in a step-by-step sequence. Squawk Pod will be right back.

13:35Welcome back. This is Squawk Pod from CNBC with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. Stand by Joe. His mic. Q. President Trump publicly feuding with Elon Musk over the White House's big bill. NBC News reporting that there are no plans for Trump and Musk to hold a phone call today, as had been reported earlier. A White House official says Trump is not interested in a call with Musk. The Tesla CEO trained some of his social media fire yesterday on our next guest, House Speaker Mike Johnson. And Mr. Speaker, thanks so much for joining us this morning. What a day, what a 24 hours, what a year, what a life.

14:17I don't know we were going to talk about the bill, obviously, but can we at least touch on this and what you know? I thought you were supposed to have a conversation yesterday with with Elon. Did that happen or was it just text? Well, we exchanged text messages yesterday. I spoke with him at length on Monday. And and that's why the kind of the blow up that happened this week was was very surprising, disappointing to me. We had a very friendly conversation. I really like Elon. He's a friend. I've come to truly respect his acumen. The doge effort was heroic, patriotic, helped us find a lot of savings and abuses that Congress was not able to uncover.

14:53cover previously. So huge contributions. And look, we can have policy differences. We hear have that here in this building, you know, every day. But it's not personal. Shouldn't be personal. You know, I don't tell my friend Elon how to I don't argue with him about how to build rockets. And I wish he wouldn't argue with me about how to craft legislation and pass it. But, you know, we've had some some good discussion. I thought it was helpful, fruitful. But, you know, it's just disappointing. I hope it all resolves today. Look, we these are these are two titans. I respect them both. I'm of course a huge fan and supporter of President Trump.

15:27I was with him in the Oval Office yesterday afternoon when some of this was unfolding and he was disappointed. I was disappointed. I just hope it resolves quickly for the for the sake of the country. Well, Mr. Speaker, one of the points that the president made early on yesterday was that Elon was intimately involved with what was in the big, beautiful bill. and was well aware of it. If there are shortcomings in terms of, and you've had to deal with your caucus, I don't know what's possible. I don't know what's possible in the Senate, but we're all well aware of the obstacles to getting a perfect bill.

16:05And I think Elon Musk, we must have had those conversations with him. So he was familiar with it. Suddenly, you know, the hyperbolic language he used to describe the bill even last week, where did that come from and what do you attribute that to? I really don't know. I mean, the point is well taken. We worked to craft this legislation over about 14 months. I mean, we began this in March of last year, working to craft a reconciliation package using 11 different committees in the House. They each worked in their area of jurisdiction and developed that policy over months and months of long discussion and deliberation and uh...

16:44and and and and and finding consensus on it and so each of the committees came out with their uh... individual pieces of the large reconciliation bill over a series of of months and weeks i mean all this text was out in the public everyone knew exactly what we were talking about uh... there was nothing done under uh... you know late at night other than uh... a long session to get to the final vote and that's because the democrats tried to stall it in the rules committee so look everyone had plenty of time to review and digest what was in the legislation i'm i'm i'm sure you want to what was in it as well.

17:13And look, the American people are sort of caught up in the drama of this, but I don't think at the end of the day, you know, tweets and social media posts really determine what's the most important to the American people. I think what they're concerned about is what we all promised on the campaign trail, what President Trump was elected to do, the mandate that we got by 77 million popular votes, and that is to make sure that border is secure, to rebuild our military industrial base at a very difficult time. That's the only new spending in this bill. The rest of it is securing historic tax cuts for the people, making the tax cuts permanent, having a pro-growth set of infusion into the economy, jet fuel to the economy, which is what this bill will provide, and at the same time, a historic level of savings for the American people.

17:57It's a fiscally responsible product. It is the first in a series of steps to get us back on a sound fiscal trajectory. And I think, Joe, it's a very important message for us to send to the bond markets, the stock market, investors, job creators, entrepreneurs, risk takers around the world, and here, of course, in the U.S. economy. The Congress is serious. We have steady hands on the wheel. We're going to address the debt problem at the same time as we are making the economy work again. And we can't wait to get that done. Speaker Johnson, this week, you know, Elon's one thing, but you do have to get through the Senate.

18:27And this week, we have a series of senators who have come on this program to talk about their concerns with the bill, including Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, who both have said they will not support the bill in its current status because they think it adds trillions of dollars to the deficit. Their words, not mine, no matter how you want to spend this or how you want to do the math, obviously it's different depending on the growth prospects that come to it, but these are two senators whose support you need who are saying they will not give it at this point. What's happening in the Senate? They also have support from others like Rick Scott and Mike Lee.

19:00do you know where things stand and how you might be able to wrangle some of the Republican senators on that front? Listen, I love Rick Scott, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson. I mean, they're good friends. We have lots of discussion about this. We are all deficit and debt hawks. We're concerned about the fiscal trajectory of the country. The national debt is the number one national security threat. We have to address it. But here's what I think Ron is missing in this. All of this is he'd like to cut, you know,$8 trillion overnight, some huge figure like that. So would I. We don't have the votes to do that.

19:33And if you did that that quickly, it would actually do real harm to the U.S. economy. So we have to do this in a step-by-step sequence of steps. Look, I liken this to an aircraft carrier. Y 'all have heard my analogy. I mean, we did not get in this situation overnight. The U.S. economy is like a large vessel on the sea. You don't turn it on a dime. It takes a mile of open ocean. But we've had since I've been alive. I mean, this is the largest cut in spending that any legislative body on the face of the earth in all human history has ever achieved. And we did that by a long, deliberate process of getting everyone there.

20:09Remember, I have a very diverse Republican caucus. I've got people from very different districts across the country. They all see the same problem set with different lenses. And I've got to concoct 218 votes, currently 217 votes, to get something across the line. So we did that. We reached equilibrium. We achieved this massive achievement with the package. And I told my Senate colleagues at their lunch Tuesday, two weeks ago, two days before we passed the bill here, that, listen, remember that I'm crossing the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss, okay? I've got a very delicate balance among all the interests.

20:45And if you load it up with too many changes or modifications when it comes back over, then we're not going to be able to balance that. So I've encouraged my friends to, you know, put their fingerprints on it, but do it as lightly as possible. We had Senator another Johnson. That's very common names. So I think the most common. But we had Senator Ron Johnson on a couple of days ago. And I'll tell you, he will you your friends, you like him and you listen. He can make a pretty compelling case for two bills. And he says, well, all I want to do is get back to pre pandemic spending levels. And there's no one who doesn't sit there and go, what are we doing?

21:23You know, where we had a six hundred billion dollar deficit. Now we're stuck at two trillion. I don't even know how that happened. So you're nodding and I'm nodding and going, yeah, that makes sense. So do the do the easy part first, extend the tax cuts and then go line by line in the second bill. But I just thought of something. You'd still have the same caucus with that second bill, wouldn't you? So whatever whatever constraints are on you and obstacles that you have right now, why wouldn't they rear their ugly head? And in the Senate, you'd have the same problem in the Senate. So you're basically dealing with what you can with with the hands that you've been dealt.

22:02That's right. And the reason I advocated for the one bill strategy from the very beginning is because I know my team here. I mean, the job of the speaker in an era with razor-thin majorities is that you've got to know your members and you've got to know their districts to a granular level so that you can build that consensus that's necessary to get the product delivered. And we've been doing that here. And I told my Senate colleagues, it's much more complex in the House than it is the Senate. I know they have the same debates, but I've got more than 170 additional personalities and districts to deal with than they do, right?

22:35So it's a complicated balance. But everyone here wants to reduce spending. All of us want to return to pre-pandemic spending levels. I mean, we do, but you have to do that in a sequence of events. We have a plan. OK, this is the first of a multi-step process, as I mentioned. We're going to have another reconciliation bill that follows this one, possibly a third one before this Congress is up, because you can have a reconciliation bill for for each budget year, each fiscal year. So that's ahead of us. We're also doing rescissions packages. We got the first one delivered this week from the White House, and that will codify many of the doge cuts.

23:11There'll be a series of those that come along. And we have the actual spending bills, the regular appropriations process upcoming where we will spend less money. This is the team that will deliver and return us to fiscal responsibility. But it takes us a little bit of time to do it. Yeah. What what are you hearing from your colleagues in the Senate? It's likely about salt. I mean, they've got you've got, you know, your own issues with your caucus. I mean, Susan Collins and, you know, Josh. What are you expecting to come back? What are going to be the priorities for what the Senate changes? And then when it gets to your guys, I'm how big is your hat with the rabbits?

23:52How many rabbits are in the hat that you're always dealing with, Mr. Speaker? You got a few left in there? Well, look, it's a lot of prayer and patience that delivers this. I wish I had a magic hat. They've written my eulogy about 10 times, and they've discounted our Republican majority, and everyone said we couldn't do all this, but we keep delivering. And the reason we do is because I sit, spend a lot of time listening to everyone, taking in their opinions and their preferences, and at the end of the day, we find that compromise. The salt part was a big piece of this, right? It took us about a year to come to that equilibrium point.

24:26We were able to get it through the House. And I understand my Senate Republicans over there, my dear friends over there, they're all from red states. You know, they don't have a lot of tolerance for that. They don't like it. I'm from a red state. I'm not in love with the idea of a higher salt cap either. But I told them the reality is our majority in the House Republican Conference runs through states like California, New York, and New Jersey. They're not red states. But my team members who win in those districts are critical for us to maintain the House majority. If we don't get this bill passed, not only are the American people going to have the largest tax increase in U.S.