Dear Commons Community,
In an escalation of Elon Musk’s fractured relationship with President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, the Tesla CEO has floated the idea of starting a new political party to rival the two-party system.
Musk conducted a poll via his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), asking his 220 million followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” The public results show that around 80% of respondents voted yes.
“The people have spoken. A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!” Musk said, reacting to the results of his Thursday, June 5, poll. “And exactly 80% of people agree…This is Fate.” As reported by Time.
On Friday, Musk shared a potential name: “The America Party.” The moniker echoes that of his super political action committee (PAC), America PAC, which was founded in 2024 to support Trump’s efforts to return to the White House. The super PAC reportedly spent around $200 million to help elect Trump. Musk’s donations made him Trump’s largest, and most prominent, donor in the 2024 election.
Meanwhile, when talking to NBC News on Saturday, Trump said that Musk will “have to pay the consequences” if he opts to fund Democratic candidates in light of their feud. The President declined to say what those consequences would be.
“I’m not going to say, but he’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” Trump said.
In 2016 and 2020, Musk voted for Trump’s Democratic opponents—Hillary Clinton and former President Joe Biden, respectively. But during the 2022 midterm elections, Musk said he intended to vote Republican, and that later developed into him becoming Trump’s close ally, which was cemented when the President positioned him as lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a role he held until recently.
However, Trump and Musk have now had an explosive fall-out, which has played out in the public arena via social media over the past few days. It started with Musk’s disapproval over Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which he called an “abomination” and told his social media followers to “call your Senator, call your Congressman… kill the bill.”
On Thursday, the back-and-forth between the two influential men escalated, with Musk alleging that Trump is listed in the files related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “That is the real reason they have not been made public,” Musk said. He did not provide evidence pertaining to this and, as of early Saturday morning, the post has been deleted.
Musk also, in another since-deleted X post, endorsed a message that said: “Trump should be impeached” and that Vance “should replace him.”
Trump has argued on his own social media platform, Truth Social, that “Elon was wearing thin” and that he asked the Tesla CEO to leave the White House.
Starting a new political party is a good idea. The Republicans have lost their souls under Trump and the Democrats are leaderless.
Tony
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
