Alex Wagner Tonight

Republicans are mired in chaos and infighting as they humiliate themselves on the national stage again without being able to pass a spending bill to keep the federal government open. Elon Musk is only making matters worse, but that hasn't deterred a faction of the Republican Party from wanting to give him a more formal leadership role. Musk, meanwhile, is only a portion of the corporate feeding frenzy taking advantage of Donald Trump's weaknesses.

After Elon Musk expressed his opposition to a new spending bill, Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters followed suit, undermining House Speaker Mike Johnson and steering the U.S. toward a federal government shutdown. Meanwhile, Democrats are stepping away from the Republican chaos, leaving the GOP stuck in its own inability to govern.

Donald Trump is pressing his grievances with the media through lawsuits, but his case against the Des Moines Register over poll results he didn't like is so poorly conceived from a legal standpoint that his real goal of using the court system as an intimidation weapon is hard to miss.

As some Senate Republicans recoil at some of Donald Trump's more extreme picks to serve in his administration, Trump is turning up the pressure on anyone who would dare defy him. Eric Cortellessa, staff writer for Time, and Tara Palmeri, senior political correspondent for Puck News, discuss.