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Elon Musk, the billionaire investor who has clashed with Donald Trump after being one of the president’s closest allies in US business, said he had formed a new political party to fight the “one-party system” afflicting America.
Musk made the announcement on X, his social media platform, on Saturday, following the enactment on July 4 of Trump’s landmark domestic policy bill, which the head of Tesla and SpaceX has blasted for adding to America’s debt.
“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,” Musk wrote.
Musk did not offer any significant details about the launch of his political venture, but suggested that it would initially at least target key congressional races. He did not indicate that he would be a candidate for political office.
“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” Musk wrote on X on Friday. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”
Musk’s move to create a new US party comes after he burst on to the American political scene last summer as a top donor and adviser to Trump, helping fund the president’s winning 2024 campaign and organising get-out-the-vote operations in some battleground districts.
Musk then joined the Trump administration as a senior adviser to the president and the leading official in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to find ways to save money in federal agencies.
But Musk fell out with Trump over the president’s “big, beautiful bill”, which extends sweeping tax cuts while only partially paying for them through new spending reductions, adding more than $3tn to the US debt over the next 10 years, according to a variety of independent projections.
“Anyone who campaigned on the PROMISE of REDUCING SPENDING, but continues to vote on the BIGGEST DEBT ceiling increase in HISTORY will see their face on this poster in the primary next year,” Musk wrote last week on X, showing an image of Pinocchio with the word “LIAR” written above his face.
Musk on Friday polled his audience on X to ask whether respondents wanted him to set up a new party, finding that 65.4 per cent wanted the “America Party” while 34.6 per cent were opposed to it.
But even though Musk would be able to deploy is own vast financial war chest to fund a new political party, such a venture would face huge obstacles in breaking through the grip on power in America held by Republicans and Democrats.
Efforts to create third parties in the US — most recently the “No Labels” movement that sought to offer an alternative to Trump and Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election — have routinely failed.
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