(CNN) Following a dramatic clash with Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk announced on Saturday that he is launching a third political party. He also stated that he will fulfill his threats if the president’s domestic policy bill is passed into law.
“We live in a one-party system, not a democracy, when it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft,” Trump’s erstwhile first friend posted on his social media platform, X. The America Party was established today to restore your freedom.
Musk, the biggest individual contributor to Trump’s 2024 campaign and, until recently, a close advisor to the president who led his administration’s effort to reduce government waste, had blasted Trump’s “big beautiful bill” due to projections that it would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars.
A significant rift between the two men occurred last month as a result of Musk’s criticism of the bill. After Musk apologized and took down his most offensive social media tweets against Trump, the feud appeared to have subsided, but in the last days as the law was getting closer to passing, it resurfaced. On Friday, Trump signed the bill into law.
Trump, for his part, claimed Musk’s introduction of the new party was absurd and would cause confusion.
Creating a third party seems absurd to me. Before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey on Sunday, Trump declared, “We have a tremendous success with the Republican Party.” The Democrats are in disarray, but the system has always been two-party, and I believe that forming a third party only makes things more confusing.
The president went on, “I think it’s ridiculous, but he can have fun with it because third parties have never worked.”
Musk may need to register the party with the Federal Election Commission, but it’s unclear how far along he is in the process. That has not occurred, according to the most recent FEC records.
The richest man in the world has stated that he prefers a party that controls expenditure and is fiscally conservative, although he has provided few further information regarding the party’s policy.
Regarding current societal issues, Musk and Trump share similar opinions. Musk, meanwhile, has claimed that the Republican economic program will result in more debt, a practice he has dubbed “debt slavery.”
Both registered Republicans and Democrats have long decried the US’s two-party system, but attempts to create a third party over the past century have not been very successful. Bill Clinton won the 1992 election when billionaire Ross Perot, an independent, received almost a fifth of the popular vote but failed to win any states.
According to campaign finance and political science experts, starting a new party is both financially and legally challenging, and candidates and voters are reluctant to join, as CNN previously reported.
In other social media tweets this week, Musk stated that his party would first concentrate on backing candidates in a small number of House and Senate races before becoming a significant political force in the midterm elections the following year.
In response, Trump has threatened the guy who was once his most well-known advisor. Earlier this week, the president stated that the government should reevaluate its large contracts with Musk’s businesses. He also called the Department of Government Efficiency, which the billionaire had formerly led, a monster that might return to devour Elon.
This report was contributed to by Samantha Waldenberg and Hadas Gold of CNN.
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