China News Service, July 5th – According to comprehensive reports from American media, just hours before President Trump signed the “Big and Beautiful” bill into law on the 4th, Elon Musk, a former ally of Trump and founder of Tesla, conducted an investigation on social media about forming a third party.
Musk Wants to “Completely Change the Rules of the Game”
As reported by People magazine, Musk wrote on social media on the 4th: “Independence Day is the best time to ask whether you want to get rid of the two-party system! Should we create a ‘American Party’?”
Source: Screenshot of Musk’s social media post
Musk also stated that a new party could “focus on 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” believing that “this would be enough to make decisive voting on contentious laws.”
Musk’s supporters quickly joined the discussion, with one commenter saying: “Elon’s idea to create a third party is very similar to Tesla and SpaceX. The chances of success are slim, but if successful, it would completely change the rules of the game.”
Musk seemed to agree and reposted the user’s comment, adding a “100” emoji and a flag of the United States.
Trump and Musk have sparked a series of conflicts over the “Big and Beautiful” bill. At the beginning of July, Musk first proposed the creation of a third-party party called “The American Party.” Just as Trump was about to sign the bill, Musk revisited this idea.
According to CBS, it remains unclear whether Musk will fulfill his promise, but the idea is said to be difficult to put into practice.
U.S. election expert Brett Kaplan mentioned that if Musk decides to establish a new party, he would need to navigate complex state laws, lengthy voter registration rules, and intense litigation.
Kaplan noted that each state has different legal regulations regarding which parties can appear on ballots, making these obstacles “highly insurmountable.” In some cases, a newly emerging state party might need to collect a large number of signatures to allow candidates onto the ballot and then win a certain percentage of votes during the election cycle.
“All state laws favor the two major parties and create barriers to the appearance of a third party,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan mentioned that Musk would almost certainly face strong opposition from both the Democratic and Republican parties, requiring significant financial expenditure for lawsuits, potentially costing “tens of billions of dollars.”
However, the report pointed out that money would not pose much of a hindrance for Musk, given his net worth exceeds $350 billion according to Forbes and Bloomberg.