After leaving DC, with his business empire suffering, his relationship with President Donald Trump fractured, and his DOGE efforts deemed broadly unpopular, Elon Musk is not quietly retreating to his Texas compound of pronatalists’ dreams.
Instead, he announced on Saturday in a post on X that he will launch a new, third political party called the America Party. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” The announcement came a day after Trump’s former top adviser and the world’s richest man teased the potential launch, polling his X followers on whether they wanted the new party; the results show that out of approximately 1.25 million respondents, 65 percent said yes.
Musk told followers in other posts that he plans to launch the party “next year,” which would be in time for the critical midterm elections, and floated the idea of focusing on “just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts.”
“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,” he added.
In another post, Musk said the party would have legislative discussions with both the Democratic and Republican parties and caucus independently.
What sparked this? It seems that Trump signing his legislative agenda into law on Friday via the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill—which Musk had previously railed against, describing it as “utterly insane” and arguing it would undo some of the work of DOGE—pushed Musk over the edge. In response to someone on X asking how Musk went from loving Trump to trying to undermine him, Musk wrote: “Increasing the deficit from an already insane $2T under Biden to $2.5T. This will bankrupt the country.”
Musk follows a long line of people who have attempted to launch a third party and discovered it was an uphill battle, due to ballot requirements and the need to build powerful political allies in a staunchly two-party system. In fact, Musk himself previously flirted with the idea in 2022 before seemingly abandoning it. As my colleagues wrote in a special issue of this magazine published last year, third parties’ electoral efforts have never been successful in America—at least, if you define success in terms of winning elections. And as David Corn wrote:
Third-party and independent candidates always talk about the legitimate need to enlarge the political debate. But they also present the major parties, billionaires, and even foreign governments with opportunities for political mischief.
Speaking of mischief, Musk’s massive wealth offers a unique form of power to potentially create it. The tech mogul, after all, spent more than $290 million on last year’s election to put Trump back in the White House, according to FEC filings. He also infamously spent $25 million earlier this year to try to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election; Musk’s preferred candidate lost, and the race also became a referendum on his attempts to buy elections. Nonetheless, when someone on X outlined the laundry list of demands he would have to satisfy to successfully launch the America Party, Musk responded, “Not hard tbh.”
Trump does not appear to have weighed in yet, though earlier this week he floated the idea of having DOGE take a look at federal subsidies provided to Musk’s companies. “BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump wrote.
Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday morning. But some Trump- and third-party loyalists have already indicated they do not approve. Trump fan Roger Stone wrote on X that he “would rather see [Musk] pursue his efforts at electoral reform within the Republican Party primaries rather than having a new party splitting the vote of sane people and letting the Marxist Democrats gain control again.” The Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, Steven Nekhaila, wrote in another post, “Elon, building a new party isn’t the shortcut you think, it’s a multi-decade slog.” But he offered an easy alternative, imploring him instead to back the Libertarian Party, the country’s third-largest political party that has never managed to score more than 3 percent of the vote in a presidential election.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—who Musk reportedly sparred with in the past—offered what appeared to be the Trump administration’s first comment on Musk’s new venture. “The principles of DOGE were very popular,” Bessent said. “I think, if you looked at the polling, Elon Musk was not.”
If Musk’s recent activity on X is any indication, it looks like those who engage with him on the platform he owns will have a central role in shaping the party’s future. “When & where should we hold the inaugural American Party congress?” he wrote in one post early Sunday. “This will be super fun!”
In another post responding to someone outlining a potential “America Party platform”—which listed “free speech,” “pro natalist,” and “reduce debt,” among other priorities—Musk simply wrote, “Yeah!”
