Musk Announces America Party
An unserious idea from an unserious man.
USA Today (“Elon Musk announces new ‘America’ party after slamming Trump’s megabill“):
Elon Musk announced the formation of a new political party amid his strident criticism of President Donald Trump’s signature legislation.
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X on July 5. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
The move follows his falling-out with former close ally President Donald Trump over spending levels in the president’s mega-bill and concerns about it increasing the federal debt. Musk strongly criticized the bill, attempted to rally opposition to it among Republicans in Congress, and called for a new political party in response.
[…]
Musk polled the idea of a new political party July 4 on his social media platform X.
“Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system!” Musk wrote, before citing the poll results − which were 2-1 in favor − on July 5.
“You want a new political party and you shall have it!” He declared.
The new party might be active in a limited number of races, Musk suggested.
“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” Musk wrote. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”
NYT (“Elon Musk Says He Will Start a New Political Party“) adds a crucial caveat:
Mr. Musk, once a close ally of President Trump’s who in recent weeks has repeatedly bickered with him, had not filed paperwork as of Saturday evening for the new party, though he added in a separate post that the America Party would be active in elections “next year.” No immediate signs suggested that Mr. Musk was working to establish his party quickly. Any new entity would be required to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.
Mr. Musk has spoken with friends in recent days about his plan for a political party and what it would take to accomplish it, according to a person briefed on those conversations. The discussions have been more conceptual than pragmatic, the person said.
Even as Mr. Musk has proved that he is willing to use his resources to move quickly and dramatically, he also has a long history of not following through on promises.
Even assuming he follows through and commits huge amounts of money, it’s rather doubtful that this will amount to much. As Steven Taylor has noted here time and again, third parties face tremendous obstacles in our system.
Further, it’s not at all clear what the America Party’s agenda is, other than opposition to a bill that’s already passed. To the extent a governing rationale exists, it would be far more productive to back primary candidates who espouse it than to create an upstart party. Most of the 435 congressional districts have been gerrymandered to strongly favor one of the existing parties, meaning that the primary is functionally the election that matters.
The Senate is more interesting. While 33 seats are up for election in 2026, only six races are expected to be competitive and one three—Michigan, North Carolina, and Georgia—are considered true toss-ups. The North Carolina seat is open, as Republican incumbent Thom Tillis has announced his retirement (and would likely have lost his primary after voting against the BBB). Democrat Gary Peters, Michigan’s senior Senator, won re-election in 2020 by only 1.7%. And Democrat Jon Ossoff won the 2020 Georgia runoff under the worst possible conditions for a Republican. It wouldn’t be difficult to find three attractive, non-MAGA Republicans and back them with a huge bankroll.
Would that be successful? Maybe not. But it would be much more likely to yield Musk-friendly Senators than starting a new party.
Of course, if the goal is simply thwarting Trump, the easiest thing to do would be to back the Democrat in all six competitive races. Presumably, though, that’s not the outcome Musk desires.
Creating a PAC is probably a more effective route for Musk to take. Third parties have to conform to a patchwork of different qualification systems in the states (e.g., setting up party leadership structures, getting signatures, ballot access requirements, and in some states even the requirement of having *county* leadership set up, with organizational meeting mandates and more).
It is a LOT of WORK.
Only a party run by an ignorant, malicious, unhinged nepo baby billionaire, can take on a party run by an ignorant, malicious, unhinged nepo baby billionaire.
Let’s see if he hires any real political killers. What’s Ed Rollins up to nowadays?
@Jen:
It’s no work at all when you’re worth half a trillion dollars.
“Further, it’s not at all clear what the America Party’s agenda is, other than opposition to a bill that’s already passed.”
And of course, one party voted unanimously against that bill in both houses of Congress. Yet, he seems uninterested in backing them (at least directly, this third party will likely help the Democrats).
It’s part of a pattern we’ve seen before, where wealthy elites look at polls suggesting Americans are dissatisfied with both parties, and then they draw the conclusion that what voters are really upset about is the national debt—a belief fueled in part by memories of Ross Perot.
What’s really behind dissatisfaction with the two major parties is a combination of (1) Right-wingers who think the GOP isn’t right-wing enough (2) Left-wingers who don’t think the Democratic Party is left-wing enough (3) Low-info disengaged voters who are about the least likely bloc to take an interest in deficit reduction.
His rhetoric right now doesn’t sound a whole lot different than Joe Lieberman or Andrew Yang last year with their attempt at a third party. But he’s also about the worst messenger for even that type of project. He’s already burned bridges with much of his original liberal/environmentalist fan base, and now he’s proving equally repulsive to the MAGA crowd, who only took interest in him as long as he was allied with their god-king. I suppose there’s a relatively small coterie of futurist/incel/Nazi types who are still with him, but the last thing they’re concerned about is the national debt, unless it gets blamed on the Jews. In short, unless he’s even more delusional than we’ve realized, I doubt this project is going anywhere; it’s just a high-profile temper tantrum he’s having right now. He’ll get over it.
The agenda is an authoritarian oligarchy run by Musk, instead of the current authoritarian oligarchy run by Trump. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.
You see that’s the problem with the imperial executive. Those who favor it always imagine it’s themselves on the throne.
My guess would be some number smaller than zero.
And as I noted yesterday, supporting incumbent Democrats running in already gerrymandered districts won’t affect the make up of Congress. It would be nice if he’d noticed them or switched parties (again), but it really doesn’t match his supposed agenda.
Musk isn’t actually all that popular. He occasionally is kind of forced into the position of defending science, not popular on the right, and immigration, even less popular. He is a total A-hole which is a plus now when running on the right but he isn’t very good at pretending, like Trump, that he is patriotic. However, he has lots of money. He will attract some candidates if he is willing to spend that money but he has a severe lack of political skills so I dont see him making much out of it. If we are lucky he will just draw votes away from the MAGA folks making it easier for Dems to win close elections. If that happens he will fold the party.
Steve
A classic of the genre, to be sure. “You don’t have options! I know what you want is rabid centrism in support of billionaires!”
Also, the American Party (which he couldn’t use) has quite the history:
Worst of luck to him, but I do hope he convinces a bunch of right-wingers that they love his billions more than they love Trump’s billions.
Musk didn’t pick a new name. The original America Party appeared just prior to the civil war, partially from the remnants of the Whigs. It was also known as the “Know Nothings”. Its platform was anti-immigrant, anti-Roman Catholic, and anti-rum. If you were to switch anti Islam for anti-Catholic it would fit in fine with the MAGAs today.
@Michael Reynolds: How is he going to get a fully organized county committee up and running in blue counties/blue states? I suppose he could pay people, but he’ll need to find them first. And that will take time to organize. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but there’s more to this than just flinging dollars around.
This is just Ross Perot 2.0, with an even more irritating/loathsome person financing the effort.
The entire Trump schtick was “I know more than experts about everything, so I can fix everything with this one weird trick!” and he’s showing daily that he only knows how to destroy things, not how to fix/repair/build anything. His one weird trick is to do something slightly more vile every day so you look back fondly on those less vile times.
The Musk schtick is just a small variation: “I know everything about everything, so I know how to fix everything, because I’m sure there’s one weird trick!” He showed daily with DOGE that he had no idea how anything worked. He never finds the one weird trick, but he’ll tell you it’s out there and taxing him or constraining him in any way sets back its discovery that much longer.
Neither of them will acknowledge the plight of living in a rundown apartment in the tough part of town, or working 2-job/16-hour days to feed your family, or moving somewhere because it puts you closer to your sick mother whose care you can’t pay for, or calling your brother to borrow $500 to cover a sudden medical bill, or having no recourse when the bank applies a car payment late and charges you a penalty that you shouldn’t owe, or applying for food stamps to cover those couple months after your company shut down and you have to search for something else.
I’m happy to have never known that life! But I’ve been close to it, and it’s a cruel, broken part of the American system that lets billionaires demand more while this kind of thing persists. People like Musk and Trump want to tell the 40-90 percenters that these are the people stealing from them, these are the people keeping them from being Elite. They’re lazy and stupid and criminal for having financial insecurity and hardship. If they just tried harder, they wouldn’t be in this situation! So the Trumps and Musks of the world demand more from the 0-40 percenters, make life at the economic bottom that much more difficult while declaring it’s for their own good. (I mean, if you’re not one of the lazy ones, it should be easy to prove! Just show that if you’re one of the 7M unemployed adults in the US, you applied to at least 3 open jobs in the last week [never mind that there are not 7M jobs to cover that unemployment, let alone 7M jobs even close to where those 7M unemployed people live], and if you didn’t, you know you’re just a social drain so you probably don’t deserve to live.)
I abhor Trump in every way. He’s a bad human, an ignorant asshole who can’t be bothered to learn anything or to be anything else. But I find Musk more odious in a lot of ways. He and his technotopian hangers-on believe so wholeheartedly in the social myths of The Coming Age of AI that they simply refuse to engage the world as it is. Musk is “worldly” enough that he should know better, he’s smart enough and motivated enough to be able to read the history of societies and economies and moral philosophy, and to coherently think through his actions. But it’s inconvenient, so he doesn’t.
@Jen:
How to attract experienced campaign consultants and pollsters and whatnot? Show them a stack of money. Those people are mostly whores who just work for the payday.
You hire a Rollins or Carville comp and say, ‘Build me a party using this 50 billion dollars I found under my couch cushions, and remember, our goal is not to win but to damage Trump because he hurt my feelings and took away my government subsidies.’ They bring in all the political hacks and the hacks bring in the workers. And Musk can use Twitter as a 24/7/365 mind-fuck tool. And he can buy all the local media in whatever district he targets.
But of course he’ll bail if Trump just gives him back his subsidies and contracts. It’s not as if Musk has a soul or ideals or beliefs other than ‘more for me me me.’
@ptfe:
Multiple thumbs up for that.
Ketamine is one hell of a drug, apparently.
Apparently Anthony Scaramucci and Mark Cuban are aligning with Musk.
Doesn’t the ghost of George Wallace already hold the American Party trademark?
For someone who ginned up concern for white South African “white genocide,” a shout-out to George Wallace from Musk is unsurprising. Whether it is a measure of Musk’s gross ignorance of American history and culture, or another one of his immature trolls, remains to be seen.
All this amounts to “Tell me you have only a rudimentary understanding of politics and no education in political science, without telling me you only have a rudimentary understanding of politics and no education in political science.”
And/or: Musk is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.
@ptfe: All well said.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Musk is more of an idiot savant.
Musk should visit Politics1 web page
DIRECTORY OF U.S. POLITICAL PARTIES and then decide if the United States needs another political party.
He might also check out the wizards who created the self labeled advocacy organization
No Labels if he wants to learn how not to create a political party in the United States.
Wouldn’t it be easier to wait until after the election, then start shopping for members who are willing to accept $5M in exchange for leaving their party and joining Musk’s party? Heck, he could find those people quietly before making sure his party is registered properly in their state(s). Repeat every two years. Focus on the old members for whom $5M is a very comfortable retirement.
Whether El nazi wins any races isn’t very relevant. I see two things that really matter:
1) Since red and blue are already taken, is this new party white*?
2) Will it hurt the Repuiqans? If not, why even bother. El nazi may as well just lite a pile of cash on fire.
*Rhetorical question..
@Steven L. Taylor:
“Musk is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.”
Or as popular.
@CSK: Obviously something like this would be Scaramucci-bait (he is a great recurring bit character in all the drama of the past N years, even if it does seem like he’s winking at the camera a bit too much), but I kind of thought Mark Cuban wasn’t this stupid.
I never thought Cuban was a good billionaire (the only good billionaire is Dolly Parton, and she really tries to avoid having a billion, to prove the adage that there is no good billionaire), but Musk is so transparently an idiot and a whites supremacist that I didn’t think Cuban would go there. Maybe he thinks he can wrestle control away if Musk hires the right people to build it despite his best efforts. I could go for billionaire fights.
Aside: I really hope Musk’s fortune gets split evenly among his 4350 children. And that they are all sterile.
@Kathy: At least with a political party, some of the money will go from reserves into the M1 money supply. Burning it is a waste that helps no one.
Citizen Musk’s investors got to love this latest distraction.