Elon Musk is threatening to launch his own political party called the America Party if President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” passes. And while the billionaire oligarch already suggested the idea almost a month ago after his falling out with Trump, he seems serious this time.
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk tweeted on Monday. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”
Passing the bill has been quite a slog for the Republicans, even as they hold a majority in both chambers of Congress. As it stands, the bill would be a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest Americans to the wealthiest, causing an estimated 11.8 million Americans to lose their health insurance and adding $3.3 trillion to the federal deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But it’s only that last part about the deficit Musk seems concerned about, even as some Republicans have expressed concerns about the number of people who will lose Medicaid coverage.
Musk, who started Trump’s term by doing two Nazi-style salutes, also tweeted Monday about how he would fund primary challenges to anyone who voted for the Republican bill, putting it in the kind of dramatic language the far-right has embraced in the Trump era.
“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!” Musk wrote Monday. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Musk was Trump’s right-hand man as the head of DOGE earlier this year but had a dramatic spat with the president that spiraled quickly. Musk said Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files, strongly hinting the president was involved in sexual abuse, while Trump threatened to take away Musk’s lucrative federal contracts. Musk eventually backed down, deleting his tweet accusing Trump of Epstein connections and rescinding a threat to stop shuttling astronauts to the International Space Station.
It’s not clear what Musk might do to make his new America Party a reality, but he’s obviously been deeply involved in political organizing before. This is the guy who spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump and other Republicans elected in 2024, starting his own political action committee called America PAC to get the job done.
Musk is also frustrated by a raise in the debt ceiling, something other Republicans like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have opposed.
“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 wrote.
Aside from the deficit and the debt ceiling, Musk is also clearly upset with his own companies getting stung by a decline in tax credits for things like electric vehicles.
“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive,” Musk wrote on Sunday. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
As the wealthiest person in the world, it would be easy for a guy like Musk to hire a team and start his own political party. But that doesn’t mean getting anyone elected from that party would be a cinch. America’s two-party system is rigged in so many ways that the average person doesn’t understand. But one thing most everyone understands is the Electoral College and how it creates a system that’s uniquely unfair among liberal democracies. The most infamous example is perhaps Ross Perot’s presidential bid as an independent candidate in 1992. Perot won 19% of the popular vote, almost 1 in 5 of all votes cast that year for president. Perot was awarded zero Electoral College votes.
Musk is a wealthy guy. But it remains to be seen whether even the wealthiest person in the world can challenge Washington’s two-party system in such a stacked system.
Read the full article here
