Is Musk Pulling A Yang With Third Party Play?
After threatening to pull the trigger if the Big Beautiful Bill were to pass, billionaire inventor Elon Musk followed through with his promise to break away from the GOP.
It did pass. And today, Musk announced plans to launch the America Party — a concept touted by the Tesla owner for some time in one form or another for years.
“By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it. When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft [sic], we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk wrote in a post on X, which he also owns, following an online poll on the matter. The poll result was roughly 65-35% in favor of a new party (one of the polls, anyway).
After coming in hot to the national political atmosphere as a Trump advisor and helping lead the DOGE initiative, Musk had a falling out with Republican President Donald Trump, soon proposing the new party.
Among numerous concerns he had with the projected cost of the BBB, Musk pointed out provisions that would remove tax credits for electric vehicles. Trump has fired back with calls to investigate federal subsidies for the electric car industry as well as Musk’s citizenship status as a native South African.
“The way we’re going to crack the uniparty system is by using a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: Extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” Musk posted today.
But is this as strategic as the battle at Leuctra? If so, Musk will have to do better than Andrew Yang, who jumped ship after failing to clinch the Democratic nod for President in 2020. Yang started the Forward Party, a merger of his own PAC and two other left-Populist organizations and Christine Todd Whitman‘s leftover ambitions.
Today, Forward boasts a little over 5,000 members and five elected officials at any level of government — the top-ranking being Utah state Sen. Dan Thatcher, who left the GOP. The overwhelming majority of Forward-affiliated electeds have dual-party allegiances, usually Democrats.
Most readers may recall other third party and independent bids by Ross Perot (independent then Reform Party), Pat Buchanan (Reform Party, after ditching the GOP), Ralph Nader (Green), and New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (Libertarian). Yang is arguably the most recent-plus-noteworthy of such ill-fated attempts, which are often derided as “spoilers” of their closest major party opponent. The spoiler effect has become so feared that many states are making it more difficult for third parties to qualify for automatic ballot access.
Musk comes to the party-building world with 221 million social media followers and a wider media spotlight than Yang, who struggled to maintain the polling threshold necessary to appear in 2020 Democratic primary debates. Yet he comes into the inter-partisan spectrum with a platform not that much different than the national Republican Party’s, or your average MAGA manifesto for that matter. Musk reposted:
To that, immediate past Texas GOP Chairman and party renegade Matt Rinaldi pointed out:
A third party often criticized as a mirror of the GOP — the tax-averse Constitution Party — reposted:
The Forward Party hopes to have ballot access in most U.S. States by 2028. Can Musk’s America Party beat their progress? Or Howard Phillips‘s, for that matter, as he founded the U.S. Taxpayer Party that later became the Constitution Party, with dreams of supplanting the Grand Ol’ Party? According to Yang, he’s willing to not compete for anti-MAGA votes in ’28 but share that momentum with Musk, according to an interview with Politco today — a strange bedfellow move considering how liberal Yang’s policies are compared to Musk’s (UPDATE: see platform below).
Musk and Yang at least agree on Universal Basic Income. Policy differences may not matter to either Musk or Yang all that much if the goal is breaking up the existing Republican-Democratic hegemony, or simply sticking it to Trump. And that’s assuming Musk isn’t engaging in one of the most spectacular displays of political theater we’ve seen in a long time in order to save face with a crumbling Tesla customer base. And maybe even to promote his own brands.
UPDATE: TheAmericaParty.org has been launched and appears to be the official website of Musk’s efforts. Below is the preliminary platform:
Fair Economy
Smart growth, small-business empowerment, and tax pathways that reward work—not just wealth.
Balanced Budget
Fiscal policies and reforms that ensure responsible spending, sustainable investment, and long-term economic stability for everyone.
Secure Nation
Strategic self-reliance, selective alliances, and modern defense to keep America safe.
Innovation Economy
Slash red tape, champion entrepreneurship, invest in AI, robotics, and space—so America always leads the frontier.
Future-Ready Society
Merit-based immigration, STEM-first education, and contingency pilot projects for Universal Basic Income as AI reshapes work.
Free Expression
A Digital Bill of Rights protecting open algorithms, user privacy, and robust debate—because ideas win.
Abundant Energy
Revenue-neutral carbon fee, next-gen nuclear, and market-driven clean tech instead of endless subsidies.
Space Frontier
Invest in launch tech, lunar logistics, and Mars R&D—unlocking in-orbit industry and space-mining wealth—so America leads the next great leap.
