The 2024 election proved that, by a slim margin, more Americans hope to save Western civilization than to destroy it.
Alas, sometimes good intentions pave the road to hell.
According to CNBC, mega-billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla and former political ally of President Donald Trump, has cost Tesla more than $68 billion in market capitalization following his decision to create a new political party called the “America Party.”
On Monday, Tesla’s stock lost nearly seven percent of its value, which accounted for the gargantuan decline in market cap.
In the 2024 election, Musk donated $288 million to help elect Trump and Republicans, per The Washington Post.
That hefty sum, for which Musk seemingly feels unappreciated, amounts to only a fraction of Monday’s loss, which is about 225 times more.
And, without adjusting for inflation, $68 billion would have made him the world’s richest person only a generation ago.
According to Forbes, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had a net worth of $63 billion in 2000. Not until 2008 did Gates fall from his perch atop the rankings of the world’s richest people, a position he had held for thirteen years.
In other words, Musk’s latest foray into politics proved immediately and spectacularly costly.
Would you consider supporting the America Party?
Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC that investors dislike Musk’s political ambitions.
“Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” Ives wrote in a note Sunday.
Musk, of course, spent months leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
However, the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on Friday, created a rift between the once-close allies.
The debt-conscious Musk has denounced the bill as a bloated product of the Washington, D.C., Uniparty’s spending.
On general principles, of course, one may sympathize with Musk. After all, conservatives and Trump supporters largely prefer a much smaller federal government than what currently exists.
Nonetheless, Musk’s America Party amounts to an absurd vanity project.
Sunday on his social media platform X, for instance, Musk confirmed the new party’s stance on gun ownership.
For the record, he called the Second Amendment “sacred.” But that hardly matters, for political platforms do not work that way.
The Republican Party formed in 1854 because Whigs refused to take a stand on keeping slavery out of the territories. That one issue brought Northern voters together. And it worked. Six years later Republicans elected Abraham Lincoln president.
Political action comes from many motivated individuals. One man, no matter how powerful, cannot fashion a political party from whole cloth in the way Musk appears intent on doing.
As for the possible consequences of Musk’s America Party, at this point that would amount to pure speculation.
Should Musk pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2026 midterm elections — targeting “just two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House districts,” as he said on Saturday, per CNBC — he could conceivably tilt the balance in Congress.
But what exactly would that mean? How would those candidates vote? If their politics reflect Musk’s, could we conceive of any major issue on which they would align with Democrats?
Moreover, looking ahead to 2028, when Trump will not appear on the ballot, Musk’s relationship with Vice President J.D. Vance and other young leaders in the president’s MAGA movement will matter more than the Tesla CEO’s shattered friendship with the president.
In short, one cannot hope to predict what Musk will accomplish via his new America Party, and it will cost him a great deal of money in the meantime.
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