From supporting Trump to building a third party, the difficult political journey of "madman" Musk

Jessy, Golden Finance

On July 5, local time, Musk announced the establishment of a new political party, the "American Party", which is independent of the Republican and Democratic parties.

In recent days, Musk has posted many posts criticizing the "Big and Beautiful" bill as "extremely crazy and destructive", and said that if the bill is passed, a new party will be established immediately.

Trump himself also responded that Musk's dissatisfaction was because the bill canceled the tax credit for electric vehicle consumers. Trump also said on July 1 that he might consider expelling Musk from the country.

Trump and Musk formed an alliance in last year's presidential campaign, but in May this year, they completely "broke up". Originally, Musk used a lot of his money and time to support Trump to become president, and after Trump took office, he actually led the U.S. government efficiency department, mainly to cut government spending and create a more streamlined and efficient government.

He relied on supporting Trump to become president to realize his political ideals. But in the end, he broke up with Trump completely due to policy conflicts of interest, power games and ideological differences. Now announcing the establishment of a third party is essentially another attempt to realize his political ideals after realizing that the current government cannot carry and help him realize his political ideals. When a businessman has achieved great success in the business world, he wants to pursue the realization of his personal will and technological vision in politics. Will he succeed this time?

Why did he go to the step of establishing a party?

Initially, the cooperation between Musk and Trump was essentially an exchange of interests.

Musk needs to use state power to promote his political ideals of cutting government spending and reshaping government efficiency. At the same time, in his eyes, Trump, who is a businessman, will support the development of economy and technology. Trump needs Musk's money, resources and his identity as a technology tycoon to win votes from young people and technology upstarts. Facts have proved that with Musk's leading support and Trump's promises made during the campaign, most of the technology tycoons in Silicon Valley who believe in "technological accelerationism" did vote for Trump.

After Trump came to power, Musk did get the opportunity to realize his political ideals. He was appointed as the actual head of the "Government Efficiency Department", although his external identity has always been a special consultant. The Government Efficiency Department promoted the political reform of "slimming down the government" from the inside: drastically cutting redundant budgets, restructuring administrative structures, and replacing inefficient manpower with technology.

The drastic reforms of the Government Efficiency Department have also been resisted by the federal government, controversial among the public, and even several lawsuits. On May 30, Musk announced his withdrawal from the Government Efficiency Department.

After a short honeymoon period, Trump and Musk also ushered in a concentrated outbreak of contradictions.

The "Big and Beautiful" bill is the high point of this conflict. The bill cancels the tax credit for new energy vehicles. Musk believes that this is an "elite punishment" for emerging industries such as Tesla, and a countercurrent that tilts the budget back to traditional energy and military-industrial groups. He has repeatedly posted on X to oppose it, calling it "an ugly manifestation of corrupt politics."

Trump directly accused Musk of being "greedy and ungrateful", claiming that Musk was seeking benefits for himself, and publicly threatened that "maybe he should be considered for expulsion".

So far, the political alliance between Musk, a tech elite, and Trump, a populist leader, has completely broken down.

From policy differences to personality mismatches, this tech tycoon who still has the political ideal of changing the world realizes that the political reform he wants cannot be achieved through the existing system or by relying on Trump.

Establishing an independent third party seems to be the only way for him to get rid of his dependence and take over the steering wheel independently

A political ideal of technological acceleration

Musk has never been a typical businessman. He builds rockets, cars, brain-computer interfaces, and even acquires social platforms. These behaviors seem crazy and scattered. In fact, they revolve around a core: technology drives the future, the government becomes smaller, and humans become free.

This is also his political background. On many occasions, Musk has expressed his distrust of "big government": he hates complicated supervision, bloated budgets and inefficient administrative systems. He believes that technology can fully undertake most of the governance functions, such as AI layoffs, automated process management, blockchain transparent audits... These tools can not only reduce costs, but also reduce "the risk of corruption in human nature."

His ideal is a kind of "rational rule of science and technology" - the government operates like an efficient company, the bureaucracy is streamlined, and citizens have more autonomy, and all of this should be achieved by technology and engineers' calculations.

In his view, the existing two-party system is a compromise machine that always serves interest groups and cannot really "upgrade the system." He even believes that the confrontation between the two parties is essentially to cover up the old order that they jointly guard.

Therefore, Musk's party building is not to become another politician. Instead, he wants to embed the concept of governing the country with technology into the national operating system through his own party, and even one day, abolish the form of "political party" itself.

At present, Musk does have many resources that can enable him to launch a third party. For example, he controls the social media X, which enables him to guide public opinion and incite emotions without the need for media endorsement. In addition, he has many fans, who are Tesla users, cryptocurrency holders, and young people who advocate technology. In addition, he is the richest man, has a lot of money, and also has technology.

But there are still many differences between establishing a new political party and establishing a technology empire. The construction of a technology business empire and the construction of an influential political party require different abilities. Businessmen build empires according to the logic of capital, while politicians mobilize by relying on identity.

In business, Musk can leverage billions of revenue with a star product, but his public image is not stable. He is both a genius engineer and an emotional "madman" on social platforms; he supports freedom of speech and also bans journalists' accounts; his "political ideas" are not systematic, and are even mixed with obvious personal emotions. The above chaos and madness also weaken his credibility in the hearts of the mainstream middle class and neutral voters.

How far is Musk from establishing a party?

Moreover, the American political system is extremely unfriendly to third parties. The voting system of each state, the presidential electoral college mechanism, as well as party subsidies and media resource allocation are all heavily biased towards the two major parties.

It can be said that the current election system in the United States has greatly restricted the rise of third parties. Brett Kapur, an American election expert, said that the laws of all states favor the two major parties, the Republican and Democratic parties, and try to create obstacles to the emergence of third parties as much as possible.

And historical data shows that there are very few successful cases of third-party parties in the United States. In the history of American politics, the most successful third-party candidate was Ross Perot, the independent presidential candidate in 1992, who won 18.9% of the popular vote. However, even such a vote rate cannot be converted into electoral votes. In the 2016 election, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party won 3.27% of the popular vote, creating the best result in the party's history. In 2020, Jill Stein of the Green Party also received only about 1.1% of the popular vote.

The Washington Post also pointed out that the "American Party" or any newly established party that wants to shake the long-standing political structure of the United States will face many obstacles.

At present, Musk has not officially released a complete party platform, but according to Musk's speech, the "American Party" plans to become an active political force in next year's midterm elections-"focusing on only 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts."

The above-mentioned election expert Kapur said that although Musk may push a few candidates to the ballot in some states, it may take years to establish a new national party and it is impossible to complete it before the 2026 midterm elections.