Musk Threats Over Big Beautiful Bill
Of course you realize this means war.
WaPo (“Musk-Trump battle erupts anew over GOP spending bill“):
Elon Musk has renewed his assault on President Donald Trump’s signature budget bill, drawing new ire from the president and investors — and glee from some Democrats — with his threat to launch a new political party.
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk wrote Monday evening on X. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”
Trump fired back Tuesday in an early-morning barb on Truth Social as Senate Republicans wrangled over the bill overnight, taking aim at the federal subsidies Musk has received. Without them, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX would “probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” the president wrote, adding that cutting them would save the country a “FORTUNE.”
In an exchange with reporters on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked whether he would seek the deportation of Musk, who served his administration as the driving force of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll have to take a look. We might have to put DOGE on Elon. … DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon.”
In response to Trump’s comment, Musk wrote Tuesday morning that he would refrain from what he called the “tempting” urge to further escalate the back-and-forth.
NYT (“A Saber-Rattling Musk Promises a New Political Party if the G.O.P. Bill Passes“):
The country’s biggest Republican donor called on Monday for the formation of a new political party and suggested he would back primary challengers against nearly every single Republican in Congress.
That was the saber-rattling declaration of Elon Musk, should Republicans on Capitol Hill pass President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill.
While Mr. Musk’s words are often just that, he has dramatically escalated his anti-Republican rhetoric over the past few days. On Monday, he suggested that if the G.O.P. bill passed, he would swiftly form a new “America Party.”
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” he wrote in one of several Monday posts to his 220 million followers on X. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”
By the evening, Mr. Musk was committing to specific action, saying that he would support Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, among the most prominent holdouts against Mr. Trump’s bill. Though various G.O.P. factions have voiced concerns about the legislative package, potentially imperiling its passage, almost every Republican member in Congress supports some version of it.
At one point in the evening, Mr. Musk wrote that nearly the entire House and Senate G.O.P. “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth” — a tall task for even the world’s richest person, who donated nearly $300 million to Republican candidates in the 2024 election.
Mr. Musk went out of his way to call out two House Republicans who style themselves budget-cutters as leaders of the House Freedom Caucus: Representatives Andy Harris of Maryland and Chip Roy of Texas. He also squabbled with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
As Mr. Musk campaigned against the bill, Mr. Trump appeared to threaten the subsidies Mr. Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, receive from the federal government.
“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media early Tuesday. “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”
“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” he added, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, a group Mr. Musk formed.
Mr. Musk has had a tenuous, brief relationship with the Republican Party. A longtime Democrat, he began identifying with the G.O.P. only in 2022, and only began making heavy, public contributions to the party ahead of last November’s election. His extraordinary blowup with Mr. Trump in early June hastened his stated interest in the formation of a new party. He made a poll on X amid the feud asking: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”
Forming a viable third party would be a herculean task, and there were no immediate signs on Monday that Mr. Musk or his advisers were preparing to do anything concrete.
Only five weeks ago, the tech billionaire was singing a very different tune, saying he would spend “a lot less” on elections in the 2026 cycle.
CNN (“Elon Musk just made his starkest political threat since the election“):
After declaring he was stepping away from the political spotlight, Elon Musk got right back in it.
As the Senate debated President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” on Monday before a final vote, Musk issued a stark warning via his social media platform X.
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote.
A few hours later he went further, declaring on X that if the “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.”
“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” he wrote.
[…]
For weeks, Musk has railed against Trump’s policy bill, leading to a very public and ugly fight with Trump earlier this month. In a flurry of X posts several weeks ago, Musk had proposed starting a new political party.
That proposal resurfaced on Monday, when Musk said: “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!! Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”
Musk’s resolution to support candidates who plan to launch primary campaigns against members of Congress is one of Musk’s most concrete political threats since leaving his post as a White House adviser. Musk spent more than $275 million to support Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election. In late May he said in an interview he was planning to cut back on political spending, saying he has “done enough.”
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, last gave money in March to support two Republican candidates running in special elections in Florida – Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis.
Musk has long supported closed borders, deportations and stopping illegal immigration, in line with the Trump administration.
But the domestic policy bill has appeared to trigger a rift between the Tesla CEO and the White House. Musk has argued that the Republican policy bill will increase the debt, calling it “debt slavery.”
It’s just insane that this level of immaturity has had this much power to steer the greatest superpower the world has ever seen.
For reasons we’ve discussed here many times, there is no realistic path to a viable third party without radical reforms to our governing institutions. Musk has the resources to fund such an enterprise, but there’s essentially no appetite for a third way in most states and congressional districts. All an America Party running on the platform Musk seems to advocate would achieve would be to take votes away from Republicans, pretty much assuring Democratic victories in places that aren’t deep red.
Musk’s pledge to fund primary opponents is more interesting. It’s basically the threat that President Trump has successfully leveraged to stifle resistance from the GOP ranks. Many who are going to vote for the BBB are doing so reluctantly, but see no path to retaining office and advancing their career ambitions if Trump turns against them. He’s the most powerful party leader in memory.
The whole thing is bizarre. It’s not at all clear how much of this is genuine ideological friction, personal pique, and narcissism. One suspects a combination of all three.
James,
The trick with Musk opposing the GOP is not that he could grant victory to his third party, but to take victory from the GOP.
He could turn twitter against the GOP/GOP incumbents, and donate vast sums of money. From https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/cost-of-election,
the estimate if $10 billion for Congress.
Musk could in theory put a few billion $ in play.
Now, this would mean war, and El Trumpo has a lot of tools in his box, since we are not in the period of Presidents being bound by the Constitution.
Can I root for injuries?
Musk simply has too much power for one person to hold. Being a massive billionaire (Google tells me his net worth is over $409 billion) creates a power imbalance vis-à-vis other citizens that is too great.
1% of his wealth is still over $4 billion.
Even if we stipulate that Tesla, Space X, Starlink are all good and useful and deserve to make him rich, there has to be a limit on the power that that kind of money gives a person. There also needs to be some deeper acknowledgment that Musk (or Bezos) did not actually do all the work that these companies produced. There is simply some serious problems with all of this in terms of basic justice as well as the real moral dilemma associated with just hoping that uber-rich people will behave themselves.
And we have to rememeber, too, that once you hit the point that you can save and invest, a person can make a lot of passive income doing nothing–and at the scale we are talking about for someone like Musk the money is not a direct feedback loop for continuing to innovate, or whatever simplistic story some want to tell.
I don’t know what the exact answer is, but I know what a threat to democracy looks like (or just to normal governance). I would note that Musk has so much money that he is not subject to the basic gravitational pull of market forces, either.
Today Musk said that the BBB would allow Trump to commit more abuses of power.
The MAGAs are, thus far, absolutely silent about this squabble between Trump and Musk. They must be in a quiet frenzy about whose side to take.
I wholly agree with you that there is no viable path for a third party, if a path were to appear, it would be due to the extreme partisan sort of the country. Many voters will never vote for the current opposition party, they are also not enamored with the dominant party in their district.
In MA and CA, the muskevites supplant the R’s and in FL and TX they replace the Dems as the opposition. This of course would require a lot of ideological flexibility that hasn’t been seen in this country since Roosevelt. Third parties are nothing if not ideologically rigid and often built around a personality. Also the muskevites will make the same mistake that nearly all third parties make, set their sights on the presidency rather than do the hard work of party building in local and state legislative elections.
Did the chief nazi missed every single Democrat in Congress voted against the bill he wants Republiqans to vote against?
We talk of Trump dominating the party and being able to crush in-party opposition in primaries. I have to speculate that, as in all Republican evil, it ain’t just Trump. Behind the green curtain somebody’s promising to withhold money from one candidate and recruit and fund another.
@Steven L. Taylor:
There needs to be a tax of 100% for every penny past $1 billion.
I enjoy that they are finally admitting to Musk’s dependence on the government teet.
Another example of why weak parties that can’t choose their candidates is bad.
Still, I think many people overestimate the amount of influence that money can buy. Candidates need a certain amount to be competitive, but after that, diminishing returns kick in severely compared to other factors.
The latest example is that Cuomo spent 3-4 times more than Mamdani and lost. Famously, Bloomberg spent a billion of his own money to run for President in 2020 and crashed out in less than four months.
And the People’s VOICE will be someone like Thomas Massie? That’s the ketamine talking!
@Steven L. Taylor:
The myth that prevents a much more progressive tax code is not merely that uber-rich people will behave themselves. We’ve been sold trickle down and rising tides lifting all boats. That’s so if you squint hard enough, the oligarchs can make it appear as though taking it all for themselves is somehow magnanimous.
I had occasion to look at the WIKI page on the German post-war Wirtschaftswunder. It noted that as soon as Allied controls allowed West Germany reduced the very high wartime tax rates, but retained a 95% rate for the wealthy. At the time, we had about a 90% top marginal income tax rate. Reducing the number of people who can afford to make a hobby of sucking up every loose pfennig and screwing over the country seems to work well for the economy.
OMGIH! Has he broken into Douthat’s and Friedman’s stash? If he starts overdosing on that instead of abusing Ketamine, will they have any left for when the election cycle starts? What’s gonna fuel THEIR raving?
@gVOR10:
Trickle down is just a part of it. the rest, and perhaps most insidious, is the share value supremacy, aka the Cult of Welch. Above all, this is what has kept wages from growing along with productivity as they used to.
@Grumpy realist: Sure! Isn’t rooting for injuries what everybody does on Bizarro World anyway?
@Kathy: Sadly, supporting incumbent Democrats does little to shift the ideological balance in Congress. Those seats are as gerrymandered as the Republican ones. The problem actually is one of too few contested elections in a too small to be truly representative government.
This is what happens when a guy who thinks he is always the smartest guy in the room runs into his doppelganger. Trump and Musk are two guys who, to paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, “don’t know what they don’t know.” But they are incapable of learning because they’re both convinced they already know everything they need to know. Trump’s pathological projection is on display every time calls someone dumb.
The Senate has passed the BBB, 50-51. Vance was the tiebreaker.
So, the abominable bill has cleared the Senate. Now it goes back to the House, where it won’t get any less terrible.
Now, this hasn’t been mentioned lately, but I recall the cuts to Medicaid weren’t supposed to kick in until 2028. Is this still so? If it is, the GQP could escape a lot of the backlash this abomination will engender.
I wonder what the second quarter GDP will be like.
@Andy:
Money can’t overcome a bad candidate.
But it can feed the cult.
@Kathy:
I think you’re replying to @Scott F.:, not me, but yes. In Slouching Toward Utopia Brad DeLong expressed it as Friedrich Hayek v Karl Polanyi
Unfortunately, it’s proven easy for those with property to twist the “needs and desires” of the rest of us with lying and pushing a faux populism. Turning justifiable resentment our lords and masters against a made up “elite” of lefty activists, academics, entertainers and others that have never had any real power.
@Andy: Money is definitely not everything.
But it can buy a strategic challenger in a legislative primary, at least as a credible enough threat to make some MoCs think twice.
@CSK: I wonder how the caucus decided which Senators could have the cover of voting against it?
@Andy: Indeed. “One nation, under Elon”? Unlikely. If Musk fails to sober up and follows through on his threat he will learn the same lesson Bloomberg did, it’s not a simple matter of just tossing money around.
It depends heavily on how that money is spent, and who is running. Cuomo way underestimated how long a coattail his scandals had. People in New York are nowhere near ready to accept a redemption arc from him, and money couldn’t overcome those odds.
However, money can absolutely be a big factor in races. The saying that pretty much held true when I was working in this arena was “grassroots and hard work win primaries, money wins general elections.” Basically, you can’t bullsh!t your base, but in the general, you’ll have voters who are easier to persuade.
@just nutha: Murkowsi and Collins playing rock, paper, scissors. That’s my guess anyway.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Is there any way that both of these narcissists can simultaneously lose?
That both can simultaneously be humiliated?
You know: a win/win for America?
This is all so much kayfabe — Musk doesnt want to actually solve peoples’ problems, as evidenced by his endless fights against workers in all his companies.
Musk’s politics have always been hardcore RW and the only purpose of “doge” was to defenestrate all agencies that do or would [cfpb] regulate his companies.
Even the vote on this bill was fake — if Murkowski voted no, Collins was more than ready to flip.
The only reason Musk complains is that his fantasy of Finding All The Waste [which only made sense while high on any four petrochemicals] was shown to both not be a thing and didnt achieve the Magical Love From The Peoples that he promised himself.
So this feud is just two rich guys fueled entirely by narcissistic rage. Good times.
Fun update: Still waiting on that first trade deal. None will be signed. The complete and total failure of all the tariff stupidity will just add fuel to Trump’s incoherence.