President Donald Trump addressed Elon Musk‘s newly-launched “America party” during a televised Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, saying he thinks “it’ll help us.”
Why It Matters
Trump and Musk had a very public breakup after Musk left his post as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency in May.
Tensions between them hit a boiling point when Musk publicly trashed the Trump-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which the president signed into law this month.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO formed the “America Party” on Saturday after polling X users on July 4.
“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 wrote. The poll got just shy of 1.25 million votes and 65.4 percent of respondents voted “Yes.”
What To Know
Trump and Musk have traded insults since Musk announced the new party, with the president calling it a “train wreck” and saying third parties create “complete and total destruction and chaos.”
Asked about the new political party on Tuesday, Trump told reporters: “I think it’ll help us. It’ll probably help. Third parties have always been good for me. I don’t know about Republicans, but for me…”
Legal experts previously told Newsweek that Musk’s new political party could split the right-wing vote but is unlikely to succeed in any major way.
What People Are Saying
Musk wrote on X over the weekend: “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, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
Former White House chief strategist and frequent Musk critic Steve Bannon wrote on X: “The foul, the buffoon. Elmo the Mook, formerly known as Elon Musk… No, brother, you’re not an American. You’re a South African.”
Nicholas Creel, an assistant professor at Georgia College & State University, wrote for Newsweek that Musk’s America Party is “dead on arrival,” adding: “The Democratic and Republican parties have weathered civil wars, depressions, world wars, and countless scandals not through accident but because they provide organizational infrastructure, fundraising networks, and voter identification systems that third parties cannot replicate. Attempting to replace these institutional frameworks represents a decades-long project with vanishingly small chances of success no matter how much money is thrown at it.”
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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