Even President Trump has rushed out a Truth Social post criticizing Musk: 

I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks. 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. 

Maybe Elon Musk will go out as a train wreck, but his America Party will almost certainly not. A “train wreck” involves an instantaneous and huge crash of a large vehicle that destroys things in a tremendous explosion that often results in great damage to people and property. American political parties usually go out rather softly, after they have slowly fallen apart over time.  

So, here, the likeliest result will be that the America Party will go out “not with a bang but a whimper.” 

The fact is, we have seen this show before, with the Reform Party established by businessman Ross Perot. Perot was another billionaire who ran in 1992 for president as an independent, before creating his own party, named the Reform Party, in 1996 for a repeat run. The Reform Party platform was (originally) what Elon Musk wants for his own party, the America Party – a centrist third party, expressly focused on cutting the deficit and debt, which also sought to reform the political system by passing term limits for Congress, ending congressional pork, and curbing corruption. Perot and Reform were enamored with the idea of real democracy. They wanted to set up an “electronic town hall” system where the American voters could vote individually on laws through the computer. This isn’t all that different than Musk, who bought and refined a similar computer system that allows voters (and others) to express their political positions on the issues and on politics. One noticeable difference was that the Reform Party strongly opposed free trade and NAFTA; Musk seems more of a free trader.  

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It may interest you to know that the Reform Party still exists. In 2024, it tried to run Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as its presidential candidate. (He was already on the ballot as an independent.) This ended when Kennedy stepped down from his own campaign and backed Donald Trump. But the Reform Party only mattered in a handful of presidential races. In 1996, Perot won 8.4 percent of the vote. In 2000, Donald Trump briefly ran for the Reform presidential nomination but dropped out because of constant party infighting caused by the diverse group of politicians who were part of the party coalition, which in Trump’s words “include(d) a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep.” That year, Pat Buchanan, the “neo-Nazi,” won the nomination and ended up only winning .4 percent of the vote nationally, although in Florida that may have been enough to give the victory to George W. Bush. In 2004, leftist Ralph Nader, who was already running as an independent for president, was nominated by the Reform Party. He won another .4 percent. Since that year, no Reform Party presidential nominee has carried more than .02 percent of the vote.

Basically, after Ross Perot stepped down from active involvement in his party, the Reform Party fell apart because of constant infighting between intra-party factions AND from non-party groups that attempted to seize control over the party, including one led by “the communist” Trump mentioned, Lenora Fulani. Meaning the party became just another place on the ballot, with no consistent ideology behind its candidates. It also lost all its funding with Buchanan’s defeat – he received public funding based on Perot’s 1996 showing – and then steadily lost all its ballot access in all 50 states. Now, it is just a website.  

Musk seems to have the same problem that Perot did; he loses interest quickly. In 2020, Musk voted for Joe Biden for president. A year or so later, he was backing Donald Trump. Until a few months ago, he was an actual government worker under Trump at DOGE. Now, he is outside MAGA, creating a new political party. So, can the America Party really rely on his continued support? And if that ends, will we see a repeat of what happened in the 00s with the Reform Party? 

Musk and the America Party presumably wish to replace one of the two current major parties, but that is not likely. The America Party agenda is closer to that of the Republicans, who currently have full control over the federal government. Thus, there is little reason for GOP politicians and voters to leave for another party. And the Democrats, although weaker, are largely motivated by leftist policies, which Musk and the America Party are not interested in.  

The smart play for Musk was to do what I advised him before – to work within the Republican Party to promote his spending policies. But that requires patience and a willingness to strategize over the long term, which he doesn’t seem to want to do.  

As they say, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”