President Trump and Elon Musk have ramped up their on-again-off-again feud, with the tech mogul announcing that he has launched a new party, the America Party, after criticizing Trump’s tax and spending package as a “disgusting abomination.”
Trump said in a social media post Sunday that Musk had gone “off the rails” and criticized the attempt to start a third party. “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States,” Trump wrote. “The one good thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS...”
Trump also claimed that Musk’s opposition to the new law stemmed from its elimination of tax credits for electric vehicles and from the withdrawn nomination of Jared Isaacman, a friend of Musk’s, to run NASA.
Musk and his defenders on X, his social media platform, tended to focus their comments more on the larger deficits that the new law is projected to create and the $5 trillion increase in the debt limit that it included. “When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote in announcing his new party. He later posted: “What the heck was the point of @DOGE if [Trump]’s just going to increase the debt by $5 trillion??”
Musk also bashed Trump in more personal terms, again raising allegations about Trump’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Musk said his new effort wasn’t going to focus on fielding a presidential candidate, at least not yet. “Backing a candidate for president is not out of the question, but the focus for the next 12 months is on the House and the Senate,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday.
The bottom line: The bromance between Trump and Musk ended a while ago, but they each could now pose a significant threat to the other. Trump’s control over the government could present problems for Musk’s companies, many of which rely on government contracts or incentives — and could be trouble on a personal level as well. Musk, meanwhile, has the bankroll to grow his party into enough of a force that it could undercut Republican candidates with certain voters.