Elon Musk revives third party idea after One Big Beautiful Bill passes

Al Jazeera

a day ago

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has weighed in publicly for the first time since the passage of President Donald Trump's signature piece of budget legislation, commonly known as the 'One Big Beautiful Bill'.
On Friday, Musk took to his social media platform X to once again float the possibility of a third party to rival the two major ones — the Democrats and the Republicans — in United States politics.
'Independence Day is the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system! Should we create the America Party?' Musk asked his followers, attaching an interactive poll.
Musk has maintained that both major parties have fallen out of step with what he describes as the '80 percent in the middle' – a number he estimates represents the moderates and independents who do not align with either end of the political spectrum.
His desire to form a new party, however, emerged after a public fallout with Trump over the 'One Big Beautiful Bill', a sweeping piece of legislation that passed both chambers of Congress on Thursday.
Yet again on Friday, Musk revisited his objections to the bill, albeit indirectly. He shared Senator Rand Paul's critique that the bill 'explodes the deficit in the near-term', responding with a re-post and the '100' emoji, signifying his full agreement.
The 'One Big Beautiful Bill' has long been a policy priority for Trump, even before he returned to office for a second term on January 20.
His aim was to pass a single piece of legislation that included several key pillars from his agenda, allowing him to proceed with his goals without having to seek multiple approvals from Congress.
But the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' has been controversial among Democrats and even some Republicans. The bill would make permanent the 2017 tax cuts from Trump's first term, which critics argue disproportionately benefit the wealthy over middle- to low-income workers.
It also raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion and is projected to add $3.3 trillion to the country's deficit, according to a nonpartisan analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Further funding is earmarked to bolster Trump's campaign to crack down on immigration into the US. But to pay for the tax cuts and the spending, the bill includes cuts to critical social services, including Medicaid, a government health insurance programme for low-income households, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.
Fiscal conservatives opposed the debt increase, while several other Republicans worried about how Medicaid restrictions would affect their constituents.
But in recent weeks, Trump and other Republican leaders rallied many of the holdouts, allowing the bill to pass both chambers of Congress by narrow margins.
Senator Paul of Kentucky was one of only three Republicans in the Senate to vote 'no' on the bill. In the aftermath of its final passage on Thursday, he wrote on social media: 'This is Washington's MO: short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.'
Trump is slated to sign the bill into law in a White House ceremony on Friday.
The debate over the bill, however, proved to be a tipping point for Trump and Musk's relationship. In late May, during his final days as a 'special government adviser', Musk appeared on the TV programme CBS Sunday Morning and said he was 'disappointed' in the legislation, citing the proposed increase to the budget deficit.
'I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,' Musk told a CBS journalist.
By May 30, his time in the Trump administration had come to an end, though the two men appeared to part on cordial terms.
But after leaving his government role, Musk escalated his attacks on the 'One Big Beautiful Bill', warning it would be disastrous for the US economy.
'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,' Musk wrote on June 3.
Musk went so far as to suggest Trump should be impeached and that he had information about the president's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, though he did not offer evidence. Those posts have since been deleted.
Trump, meanwhile, accused Musk on social media of going 'CRAZY' and seeking to lash out because the bill would peel back government incentives for the production of electric vehicles (EVs).
On June 5, Musk began to muse about launching his own political party. 'Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' he wrote.
In follow-up posts, he noted that his followers appeared to agree with him, and he endorsed a commenter's suggestion for the party's potential name.
''America Party' has a nice ring to it. The party that actually represents America!' Musk said.
As the world's richest man and the owner of companies like the carmaker Tesla and the rocket manufacturer SpaceX, Musk has billions of dollars at his disposal: The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his net worth at $361bn as of Friday.
But experts warn that third parties have historically struggled to compete in the US's largely two-party system, and that they can even weaken movements they profess to back, by draining votes away from more viable candidates.
Musk's estimate about the '80 percent in the middle' might also be an overstatement. Polls vary as to how many people identify as independent or centrists.
But in January, the research firm Gallup found that an average of 43 percent of American adults identified as independent, matching a record set in 2014. Gallup's statistics also found a decline in the number of American adults saying they were 'moderate', with 34 percent embracing the label in 2024.
Still, on Friday, Musk shared his thoughts about how a potential third party could gain sway in the largely bifurcated US political sphere. He said he planned to take advantage of the weak majorities the major parties are able to obtain in Congress.
'One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,' he wrote.
'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.'