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President Donald Trump is furious. Progressives are aghast. Politicians and pundits are frantically reading the tea leaves.
What’s prompting all these reactions? The world’s richest man is launching a new political party.
The question hovering around billionaire Elon Musk’s just-announced America Party is the same one that greeted his Tesla electric vehicle, his SpaceX projects, his acquisition of the X/Twitter social media platform, and his short-lived but headline-stealing performance at the helm of the DOGE government reform push.
Will it work?
The short answer is simply, it’s too early to tell. The (very) early money is on it going nowhere – or maybe not. In a time when traditional political playbooks are becoming increasingly irrelevant, nobody knows for sure.
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(It’s worth noting that while the names sound similar, Musk’s new party shouldn’t be confused with the earlier American Party of the United States. It grew out of Alabama Governor George Wallace’s American Independent Party, which came close to carrying South Carolina against Republican Richard Nixon in 1968.)
The new party’s launch is the latest result of the highly public falling out between Musk and Trump. Reportedly, the split came over Musk’s deep opposition to what he saw as excessive spending included in Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment, the just-signed “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
First, Musk fumed that all GOP senators and representatives who voted for it “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” Given that all but two Republicans in the House (Thomas Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick) and three in the Senate (Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis) voted “yes,” taking them all down seems a mighty tall order.
The next word from Musk was news of the America Party’s birth.
“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party, and you shall have it!” Musk declared on Saturday via X, “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
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By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2025
When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.
Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. https://t.co/9K8AD04QQN
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Trump wasted little time firing back.
“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” he said in a Truth Social post Sunday. “The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of complete and total disruption and chaos.”
So the question becomes, how serious is Musk’s new party? The answer, as always, depends on who you ask.
“Do the math,” a national GOP strategist in Washington told us. “Right now, the America Party is a one-issue movement. And the political graveyard is filled with the remains of single-issue parties over the past 200 years. So it needs to grow. But it has nowhere to go to find that growth. Elon Musk has burned his bridges with the Right by daring to dump on Trump. Before that, he took a flame-thrower to his relationship with the Left, which had considered him a golden boy for his work with EVs. Now, he’s persona non grata to them after crawling into bed with Trump. That leaves the middle. And those folks are notorious for shying away from one-issue causes. Musk’s new party is all dressed with no place to go.”
Another GOP consultant on Capitol Hill sees it differently.
“Trump’s Achilles Heel with conservatives is his spending,” the consultant said. “It’s his soft underbelly. And right now, the Right is furious over the massive new wave of cash the One Big Beautiful Bill just unleashed. If Musk can capture lightning in a bottle, his America Party could siphon votes away from Republicans and ultimately prove a boon for Democrats. How’s that for irony? The anti-spending party would wind up helping the big spenders.”
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RELATED | DONALD TRUMP’S SIGNATURE LEGISLATION: ANOTHER BIG, UGLY BETRAYAL
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Yet a third strategist sees a different challenge ahead for Musk.
“Third parties usually rely on a strong, charismatic candidate,” he explained. “If the America Party wants to be a player in 2028, it needs to field a strong presidential candidate. And since Elon Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen, it can’t be him. The Constitution says the president must be a natural-born citizen. So while Musk could be the driving force behind the party, his name couldn’t appear on presidential ballots. Would voters be as inclined to vote for someone else simply because Musk says, ‘This is the guy’? Maybe. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
Additionally, the nuts-and-bolts headaches which accompany getting a political party up and running is migraine-inducing. Consider what happened the last time it happened, when billionaire Ross Perot launched the Reform Party in the mid-1990s. Following a herculean effort, Perot’s name appeared on the ballot in all fifty states in 1996. And what did it produce? A dismal 8% in the popular vote and zero votes in the Electoral College.
Perot fared much better in 1992 when he campaigned as an independent.
To put it charitably, Musk and his upstart America Party face an uphill climb.
They do have one thing in their favor. If it follows custom, Congress will likely adjourn in four weeks for its August Recess. Presidents frequently take that month off for a little R&R. Journalists refer to the lack of major news during this prolonged lull as “the silly season.” That makes them desperate to find something – anything – to report on, regardless of how silly it appears.
Musk’s new party could provide plenty of fodder to go around in the 24-hour news cycle this silly season.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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