Newly disclosed federal filings show that Elon Musk gave President Trump’s super PAC $5 million and congressional Republicans $10 million during the same period when he was experiencing a very public meltdown over the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Onlookers have interpreted it as a sign that the Tesla billionaire was vacillating between taking shots at Trump and making conciliatory moves designed to mend their fraying relationship.
Last year Musk went all-in on Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, engaging in an unprecedented spending blitz designed to see the former reality TV star returned to the White House. Musk was successful in that gambit, but the relationship between him and his gold-haired “buddy” has since soured. After briefly leading the Department of Government Efficiency (a quasi-agency designed to shrink the federal government), Musk began having problems with Trump over provisions in his spending bill that threatened the EV industry (and, you know, Musk’s Tesla). At the end of May, Musk formally left the administration in a swirl of controversy, while also sporting a mysterious black eye (he claimed his son, X, had socked him in the face).
Politico notes that Musk’s contributions to Trump and the GOP took place not long after the blowup between him and the president, when Musk accused Trump of being in the Jeffrey Epstein files. The outlet writes:
The contributions came weeks into Musk’s public feud with Trump, as the tech billionaire was slamming Republicans for voting for the megabill that he argued would blow up the deficit. Still, the SpaceX CEO donated $5 million each to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Senate Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc. on June 27, according to the groups’ filings with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. Those are the top super PACs supporting the House and Senate Republicans and the Trump political operation.
If the point of the contributions was to try to make amends with Trump and the Republicans, it doesn’t appear to have worked. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill sailed through Congress, and none of the provisions that proved problematic to Musk’s businesses were taken out.
Since then, Elon’s influence in the government has notably waned. This week, Politico reported that the administration was conducting a “de-Muskification” at the General Services Administration, where DOGE had formerly holed up. One person close to the organization claimed that DOGE had “lost all remaining influence” at the agency, which is responsible for supporting basic infrastructure (like office spaces and communications) at federal agencies throughout the government.
Musk has since launched his America Party—a supposed third party—as revenge against the President and the GOP lawmakers who passed the One Big Beautiful Bill. Theoretically, were the party to ever take off, it could cause serious electoral problems for many Republicans by siphoning off votes from their political races. However, “America” isn’t much of anything yet, having not yet filed any of the proper paperwork necessary for it to be incorporated.
It also doesn’t seem like many people are interested in joining the America Party, should it ever materialize. Indeed, a recent poll showed that only 14 percent of surveyed participants had any interest in joining a political party created by Musk. The poll, conducted by Yahoo/YouGov survey, found that while nearly 40 percent of Americans are interested in the creation of a third party, 55 percent said they had no interest in such a party founded by the Tesla CEO.
Meanwhile, Musk’s businesses have also been flailing. Musk recently announced that Tesla—whose sales have recently plummeted all over the world—would start a robotaxi business, claiming that a driverless service would soon be launched. Tesla subsequently launched a ride-hailing service in California, but, instead of robotaxis, the cars are just normal Teslas driven by humans.
Musk’s behavior over the past year only seems to strengthen the argument that the billionaire class is a grossly inefficient, stupid, and wasteful segment of people, many of whom seem to feel that gobs of money can solve any problem. Elon has definitively proven this assumption to be false, since he reportedly spent close to $300 million on Trump’s campaign last year and, now, less than twelve months later, can’t be said to have gained much except the burning hatred of tens of millions of Americans. I’d call that a pretty bad deal.
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