Elon Musk is already giving up on plans to start his own party - and instead looks to back Vance in 2028
After the billionaire was ousted from the Trump administration at the end of May and a subsequent online feud blew up with President Donald Trump, Musk threatened to launch the new 'America Party.'
Now the plans have been shelved and the tech mogul has backed off because of his relationship with Vance, who is considered the frontrunner for the Republican Party in 2028, The Wall Street Journal reports.
'Musk has stayed in touch with Vance in recent weeks, and he has acknowledged to associates that if he goes ahead with forming a political party, he would damage his relationship with the vice president,' the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with Musk's plans.
In late July, Musk's associates canceled a call with a group that specializes in organizing third-party campaigns because the Tesla CEO wanted to focus on running his businesses, according to the Journal.
Musk is now considering backing Vance financially if he runs for president in 2028, though his allies told the newspaper that he could change his mind as the midterm elections approach.
It is unclear how recently the pair have been in touch. During an August 11 interview, Vance joked that he wasn't sure if Musk would even 'take his calls.'
A third party would only pull votes away from the two main political parties in next year's elections - though how much from each side remains unknown. Vance said that he hoped Musk would 'come back into the fold' and rejoin the MAGA movement by next year.
'He's obviously got a complicated relationship right now with the Trump White House,' Vance told right-wing publication The Gateway Pundit in a recent interview.
'My argument to Elon is like, you're not going to be on the left, right? Even if you wanted to be. And he doesn't,' he said. 'They're not going to have you back. That ship has sailed. And so I really think it's a mistake for him to try to break from the president.'
Vance added: 'So my hope is that by the time of the midterms, he's kind of come back into the fold.'
The Independent has contacted Musk's representatives for comment.
The billionaire, who bankrolled a large portion of Trump's 2024 presidential campaign through his America PAC, announced in July that he was launching the 'America Party' in response to the president's sweeping tax and spending legislation, the 'Big, Beautiful Bill.'
'By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it,' Musk wrote at the time. 'When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.'
The bill was at the center of Musk's fallout with Trump, which escalated after the SpaceX CEO said that the president was 'in the Epstein files.' He later deleted the post on X and admitted he had taken things too far.
Despite Musk's plummeting popularity after he took a chainsaw to the federal government at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency, a poll last month found that 40 percent of Americans said they would back Musk if he created a third political party.
Musk was ridiculed after the outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, where he put millions behind the conservative Brad Schimel, who suffered a catastrophic defeat against the liberal candidate Judge Susan Crawford.
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