If you harbor deep resentments towards the Republican Party and think the huge bill they just passed through Congress is unconscionable, unfortunately you share something in common with Elon Musk. How we both look at the GOP may be different, but all roads lead to animosity. We on the left object to its gargantuan expansion of Trump’s gestapo and the historic tax cuts for the wealthy, partially paid for by stripping health insurance from an estimated 12 million people, per the Congressional Budget Office. Musk objects to it on deficit grounds, and those of us with an understanding of the bond market must unfortunately concede that Elon is parroting the right combination of mouth sounds here in his effort to ingratiate himself back into the business community he alienated. America already makes larger interest payments on the debt than what we spend on defense, and this bill will further blow out the deficit, providing us with an example of what the beginnings of a fiscal crisis could look like, per the major credit rating agencies that have now all downgraded American debt.
We on the left try to oppose Republican nihilism by using the only vehicle we have to obtain power: the horribly broken and damaged Democratic Party. Musk tried that with the GOP, taking it over and slashing the government to such a degree that an estimated 14 million deaths will result from his cuts in the next five years. Further drawing the line between civil society and a murderous manchild we unfortunately find closer to us than Trump these days, Musk is also mad that Congress didn’t enshrine his destruction of government in this bill. Trump bleats on about revoking EV credits that will hurt Elon’s carbon credits company that sells a couple of cars, and I’m sure it has an impact on Musk’s alienation, but by all accounts, this is a power struggle. Musk felt betrayed by his hand-picked NASA stooge getting kicked to the curb, all while more Republicans have lined up behind Scott Bessent than him in this factional warfare inside Trumpworld.
The outline of what happened with Musk’s arc in Trump’s White House is becoming clearer by the day, and it is exactly what most of us expected: two frail egos with their own armies of sycophants clashing over varying self-serving visions of power. The moment the break occurred, these petty posters could not help themselves, and this public spat among jilted lovers continues to this day. Over the weekend while people were hanging out with their friends and family, Musk was on Twitter announcing the creation of the America Party—a third party that is supposedly “a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: Extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield.”
Musk said that “one way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” so that the America Party would “serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws.” He also boosted a tweet that wrote “America party could soak up a lot of the existing Dem base that feel politically homeless.” His vision that he pitched in a truly sad number of posts on July 4th, 5th and 6th is one of a party that attempts to displace the Democrats into a third party. The data scientist G. Elliot Morris wrote that “The number of Democratic voters that (a) like Elon Musk, (b) think Dem leaders are too woke, & (c) want to cut entitlements is in the single digit millions. Likely even less. Meanwhile, that’s like 90% of Republicans. I don’t think this is going to work out the way he thinks.”
If he goes through with this, it will go down in history as one of the most blatant violations ever of Biggie’s fourth Crack Commandment: never get high on your own supply. Elon has spent so much time cooking his brain on Twitter that like with Trump and cable news, that distorted lens is the only way he can process reality anymore. Musk clearly sees how much his $250 million did for Trump in 2024, and he wants to replicate that strategy of flooding our elections with a truly stunning amount of money that makes John Roberts feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but with a different party that Elon fully controls. The problem the America Party has is that as Musk correctly pointed out in his holiday tweetstorm, his polling was a lot better a year ago.
Nate Silver’s polling aggregate pegs him at net 18.1 percent unfavorable with Americans. A June 2nd poll from The Economist/YouGov indicated that just 15 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of Elon, versus 80 percent unfavorable. Musk would probably rise from his k-hole to contend that someone politically homeless could not be a Democrat, but The Economist/YouGov also polled self-described moderates who only 36 percent saw Elon favorably, versus 58 percent unfavorable. Know who did see Elon Musk favorably in this poll?
Conservatives, by an 80 percent to 16 percent unfavorable margin. I wonder which party the America Party is likelier to take votes from!
The only way you could think this is an idea that helps advance conservatives in power is if your brain is still marinating in Twitter’s toxic stew all day. Noah Smith, last seen on Twitter openly debating lowering the age of consent, is not actually the avatar for the politically homeless on the left. As this study of the 2016 electorate from Democracy Fund Voter Study Group demonstrated, true socially liberal and fiscally conservative voters are quite sparse, and they already tend to vote third party. Musk reprogramming Grok into a full-blown white supremacist chatbot will further alienate the Democratic votes he says he wants to steal. The America Party is likely competing for more Libertarian Party votes than Democratic Party votes.
The other reason this is so transparently bad for the GOP is that it only encourages the globe’s most poisoned and petty posters to do more of what they love, creating increasing internal discord for the Republican Party. Trump went after Elon in an extended Bill Ackman-style post on TruthSocial last night, dictating to his texter that “I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks.” Musk responded by asking “what’s TruthSocial?” and then pivoted to posting a lot of memes making fun of the Attorney General for one of Jeffrey Epstein’s acquaintances declaring over the weekend that all the conspiracy mongering over Epstein’s client list was actually a big nothingburger, and there’s apparently nothing to see here and we all can stop talking about it forever now.
Musk mocks Pam Bondi.
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— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 4:10 AM
This is potentially a very big development for the 2026 midterms. Everything Elon Musk says should always be taken with infinite grains of salt, but he already has spent a lot of money on elections, and he is saying he will do it again. Musk has his own propaganda platform that has whipped up quite a bit of support for him on the right, although how much of that sticks around when it comes into conflict with Dear Leader is very much TBD (his favorability among Republicans dropped 16 points between March and June in one poll). But if he’s planning to fire his money cannon at the closest handful of Senate and House races, it wouldn’t take that many disaffected Republican voters to help Democrats flip one of the narrowest Congressional majorities in history. If Musk persists with this hairbrained effort, the growing tension between him and the GOP could foster countless internecine fights that have the potential to create a Democratic Congress, as well as some of the pettiest and most deranged posts in human history.
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