Businessman Elon Musk announced this Saturday on X, the social network he owns, the birth of America Party, the political party he had been threatening to create in recent weeks following his departure from the Donald Trump administration and his bitter public confrontation with the US president. He did not give further details on how or where he had created or plans to register this party, beyond, in another demonstration of the impulsive spectacle that American politics has become, taking its foundation for granted, and stating that it will be enough to"return freedom to Americans."

The reason that has pushed the richest man in the world in this direction is the same one that triggered the end of his romance with Trump: the “One Big Beautiful Bill” tax reform (BBB). It has just been passed by the US Congress and Trump signed it on Friday. It includes a $4.5 trillion tax cut and $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which will lose some 12 million people, and to food stamps. It also predicts a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and an increase in the already spiraling public deficit.

Musk announced his decision to found the America Party after completing a poll he had launched on Friday, Independence Day in the United States. It was, he wrote, “the perfect time” to ask whether people are ready to welcome a third party that would break the balance (unbreakable for a century) between Republicans and Democrats. “Should we create the America Party?” Musk asked his more than 221 million followers on X. He received 1.25 million votes.

Sixty-five percent responded yes, prompting the South African-born businessman to respond with this message:"With double the votes, you've decided you want a new party, and you'll get it. When it comes to bankrupting our country through waste, this is a one-party system, not a democracy."

This week, while the BBB was being processed, Musk had already spoken about founding the America Party in response to a regulation that, according to an independent congressional agency, will lead to a $3.3 trillion increase in the public deficit over the next 10 years.

He also suggested he would fund the primary campaigns of those running against Republicans who supported his passage on Capitol Hill, even if it's"the last thing" he does. On Friday, he specified that it would be enough to"focus on just two or three Senate seats and eight to ten House districts." "Given the narrow legislative margins, this would be sufficient to cast the deciding vote on controversial laws, ensuring they serve the true will of the people," he wrote, again in X.

In both a post on his own social media platform, Truth, and in subsequent statements to reporters, Trump reacted to those plans this week by threatening Musk with a government investigation into his companies and the suspension of public contracts for a businessman heavily dependent on him, especially in two of his businesses: the space exploration company Space X and the car company Tesla. The president also floated the idea of deportation. “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and go home to South Africa [where the entrepreneur was born 54 years ago],” Trump wrote.

There are too many uncertainties surrounding Musk's announcement this Saturday. Among them, how a man with a talent for business but no political experience beyond what he's acquired in the last year intends to launch the idea of a party. First, he joined Trump's reelection campaign, to which he contributed a record sum of more than $260 million. Then, he enlisted as a special government employee, leading the government spending chainsaw known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with which he annihilated entire federal agencies and laid off tens of thousands of civil servants.

He certainly has plenty of money to influence politics, and these days many Republican congressmen from contested districts have expressed their fear of facing candidates financed by Musk in a country where campaign funds are almost always the only possible electoral argument.

Beyond the confines of X, it still seems highly unlikely that Musk will be able to change the American two-party system, as he promises. Others have tried before to tear down that sturdy armor. And they have always been efforts of the kind that lead to melancholy, best summarized by the great historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970): “Third parties are like bees. Once they have stung, they die.”