CNN’s resident MAGA commentator issued a fearful warning after Elon Musk launched his new ‘America Party’ in a direct challenge to President Donald Trump.
“My humble advice to Elon, who I admire very much, actually, is that you may be dividing the forces of people who want to save Western civilization to the benefit of the people who don’t,” Republican pundit Scott Jennings told the network Sunday.
The former George W. Bush aide said he regrets the vicious and swiftly escalating spat Musk has now found himself embroiled in with the president.
“I sort of hope everybody puts the band back together the way they had it in 2024 because when everybody was working together, things worked quite well,” he said.
The SpaceX founder set a torch to his otherwise cozy bromance with Trump in June after departing the administration’s cost-cutting ‘DOGE’ drive, criticising the president’s “Big Beautiful” spending bill on grounds it would undermine all the changes he’d made as head of the initiative.
In a highly public meltdown on his social media platform X, he described Trump’s proposals as a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled[,] disgusting abomination,” with the resulting exchange of fire escalating to the point of Trump threatening to revoke Musk’s highly lucrative government contracts and the billionaire suggesting the president had been less than candid about the extent of his relationship with the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Though the feud appeared to have simmered down over the past several weeks, Musk poured kerosene on its embers ahead of last week’s congressional votes on the bill, threatening to fund primary challenges against Republican lawmakers backing Trump’s budget who’d otherwise campaigned on a mandate for reducing wasteful government spending.
His proposed launch of a new ‘America Party’ has fast attracted the enthusiasm of Trump critics from across the political spectrum, including the president’s former director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci, and billionaire Democrat donor Mark Cuban.
Trump, for one, appears to be having none of it, raging in a series of Truth Social posts Sunday to accuse his former campaign donor of going “completely ‘off the rails’” and “essentially becoming a trainwreck,” in case the metaphor wasn’t clear.
“He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States––The System seems not designed for them,” he added of Musk’s latest move.
““The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats, who have lost their confidence and their minds! Republicans, on the other hand, are a smooth running ‘machine,’ that just passed the biggest Bill of its kind in the History of our Country,” he added.
Given the tenor of these tit-for-tats, Jennings’ hopes for resolution would seem a distant prospect.
On that front, fellow panelist Jamal Simmons, former comms director to Kamala Harris during her tenure as vice president, asked Jennings for a little clarity.
“I’m just curious—if they’re on the side of Western civilization, what’s on the other side of civilization that people want?” as he put it.
“Not Western civilization,” Jennings responded. “Terrible. Not American values, not Western civilization.”
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