Senate Republicans scoff at Elon Musk’s proposed third party
Benjamin Weiss
WASHINGTON (CN) — Deepening his rift with President Donald Trump this week, billionaire Elon Musk has floated the idea of forming a third party to challenge both Democrats and Republicans on the national stage.
But while the proposal from one of the president’s former top advisers and campaign megadonors has ruffled some feathers on Capitol Hill, some of the Trump administration’s Republican allies in the Senate aren’t feeling too threatened.
Musk has publicly soured on Trump after departing from the White House last month, where he served as a special government employee overseeing his U.S. Department of Government Efficiency. The billionaire Tesla CEO’s latest tirade against the administration came last week as congressional Republicans passed a sweeping budget reconciliation package championed by the president and was refreshed after the Justice Department said this week that it would not release a mythical trove of documents related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And over the weekend, Musk announced that he would spearhead a new national political party, known simply as the America Party.
“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote in a post on his social media platform X on Saturday. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
The announcement spurred a sharp retort from Trump, who wrote in a Sunday post on his own social media platform Truth Social that Musk had become a “train wreck” and that his move to establish a third party would create “disruption and chaos.”
Some Senate Republicans appear to share that perspective.
“A third party is not sustainable,” North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis told Courthouse News outside the Senate chamber Wednesday.
Tillis, who plans to leave Congress when his term is up in 2026 and whose seat is sure to produce a contentious race, suggested that Musk’s efforts may be better placed in trying to find a candidate he supports within the existing two-party paradigm.
“I think it makes more sense if you want to target races and try to find someone who’s more centrist, left or right of center — that makes sense,” said the North Carolina Republican. “He may be onto something in terms of creating independence in a very polarized world, but I just don’t think that’s the right way to do it.”
Other Senate Republicans were somewhat dismissive of the idea that Musk’s proposed America Party could be a spoiler for the GOP’s electoral hopes. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was skeptical that the billionaire’s third party would even come to fruition.
“I don’t know that anything will actually come of it, but maybe it will,” Hawley told Courthouse News. “I don’t have a strong feeling. I don’t intend to join the party.”
Asked whether he thought that Musk’s proposal could hurt Republicans at the ballot box, the Missouri senator was similarly noncommittal. “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s see.”
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, the Senate majority whip, sidestepped questions about the billionaire’s third party, telling Courthouse News on Wednesday that he had not been following the saga. He declined to answer follow-up questions.
Musk, who spent upwards of $300 million to help elect Trump in 2024 and whose government efficiency effort played a central role in the early days of the president’s second term in office, has become increasingly critical of Trump since leaving the White House in June.
Immediately following his departure, the billionaire and the president exchanged a war of words in which Musk suggested in a post on X that Trump had been implicated in documents related to Epstein. He later deleted the post and apologized, saying that he “went too far” with some of his comments.
Still, Musk has remained critical of the president.
“How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?” he asked in a post on X Tuesday.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly said that he asked Musk to leave the White House amid a spat over his administration’s plan to phase out certain tax incentives for electric vehicles. The Republican-led budget reconciliation measure, which the president signed into law last week, includes language cancelling those tax credits — and Musk has intensely criticized the bill.
“I have campaigned on this for two years and, quire honestly, when Elon gave me his total and unquestioned endorsement, I asked him whether or not he knew I was going to terminate the EV mandate,” Trump wrote on Sunday on Truth Social. “He said he had no problems with that — I was very surprised!”
So far, details about Musk’s proposed America Party are few and far between. The billionaire has said that his political organization would try to win two or three Senate seats and a handful of House districts, which he said would be enough for his party to serve as the deciding votes on “contentious laws.”
But the America Party would need to get on the ballot on states where it wants to compete, a process that varies from state to state — and it would also need certification from the Federal Election Commission. Those roadblocks may keep Musk from realizing his dreams of mounting a serious electoral challenge to Republicans or Democrats any time soon.
And, for now, at least some Republicans remain wholly unbothered by the billionaire’s antics. Asked about the America Party on Wednesday, Kansas Senator Roger Marshall offered his own pointed response.
“Elon, who?” he quipped.