White House stands by tax bill after Musk calls it a 'disgusting abomination'

Musk, who has been openly critical of the proposed reconciliation bill, said Tuesday afternoon that he "just can't stand it anymore."

"This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination," Musk added in a Tuesday afternoon post on X. "Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it."

Trump has lashed out at Paul and others for opposing the bill, but he has taken a more measured approach to Musk's criticism.

"Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Tuesday afternoon briefing when asked about Musk's most recent criticism.

"It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he's sticking to it," she said. 

In May, when Trump was asked about Musk's criticism of the bill on CBS, he responded, "Well, our reaction's a lot of things," before pivoting to talk about the votes needed to pass the bill. 

"Number one, we have to get a lot of votes, we can't be cutting - we need to get a lot of support and we have a lot of support," he said. "We had to get it through the House, the House was, we had no Democrats. You know, if it was up to the Democrats, they'll take the 65% increase."

"A lot of what Elon was working on was on the discretionary side of the budget, which this doesn't touch. The reconciliation bill just deals with mandatory spending," Thune said. "But we want to incorporate a lot of the savings that he found, and there are ways to do that."

Thune said he hoped, through other legislative efforts, discretionary spending Musk is concerned about will be addressed. He pointed to a proposed "rescissions bill" expected to be pushed by the White House that Thune said will try "to capture a lot of what Elon found in these various agencies and puts it in a bill that's submitted to Congress."

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.