Libertarian Party Invites Elon Musk to Join Them in the Realm of Political Loserdom

Amidst a row with the President, Elon Musk has been set adrift from the MAGA movement and is currently in search of a new political identity. Once a steadfast stan of the Trump White House (and a leader of its disastrous DOGE initiative), the Tesla billionaire now says he believes Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is a “disgusting abomination” and that he’s willing to primary any Republican who supports it. He has also said he is interested in forming his own political party, so that “people” (translation: him) “actually have a VOICE.” Yet while he may be cut loose from the centers of power in Washington, Musk has a potential ally in another political loser of the D.C. establishment: the Libertarian Party.

Politico writes that Libertarian National Committee Chair Steven Nekhaila wants to dissuade Musk from starting his own party and has, instead, invited the billionaire into the fold of his own. “Making a new third party would be a mistake,” Nekhaila told the outlet this week. “The Libertarian Party is the most set-up party to be the dissident subversive party.” He also noted that, unlike many new political parties, the libertarians already have ballot access in pretty much every state. “There’s no way an independent or a new party can actually do this,” he said. “It takes years and years and years, and the infrastructure and everything else. It’s not a fun process.”

What does Nekhaila see in Musk? A kindred political spirit potentially but, also, a guy with hundreds of billions of dollars:

Musk’s money would go a long way in advancing Libertarians. The national organization operates with a yearly budget of between $1 million and $3 million, Nekhaila said. Musk alone funneled more than $250 million into the 2024 election (mostly through his America PAC) to help catapult Trump to the presidency in November.

Musk joining the libertarians is a fascinating idea. As Politico notes, Musk could leverage his ridiculous bank account to boost a party that has long toiled in the humiliating fringes of irrelevance. Of course, if the libertarians were to take Musk’s money, their political party might also become The Elon Musk Show, which is not necessarily something the party leadership would want. It’s difficult to imagine Musk’s brand of self-serving ideological extremism melding well with the nutcase idealism of a political community that thinks seatbelts are one step removed from fascism. On the other hand, were Musk to actually create his own “America Party” as he has suggested, he could potentially draw the libertarian cadres into his fold—or, more predictably, find himself at war with them over inevitable policy disagreements.

As a political party, the Libertarian Party has always been a giant joke. Having never gotten anywhere close to being competitive with the dominant candidates, the libertarians are—like all third parties in this country—politically ineffectual and serve little purpose except to lobby the GOP to enact increasingly destructive fiscal policies. During the recent presidential election, even Trump made a point of razzing them to their face when he was faced with criticism from the party: “Keep getting your 3% every four years,” he jeered, amidst boos from the crowd.  

Yet while libertarianism has never triumphed (or even, really, functioned) as a political constituency, in many ways, it hasn’t had to. That’s because, when it comes to the policies pursued in Washington, major tenets of the libertarian program won out decades ago. The platform that David Koch ran on during the 1980 presidential election is largely being pursued by the current Trump administration through its Project 2025 playbook. The libertarian philosophy is thriving, even if the Libertarian Party is about what you’d expect from a group that doesn’t believe in government: a non-entity that can’t govern and is too much of a freak show to win any elections.

Musk’s continued political engagement is curious, given how much his DOGE activity seems to have hurt his business interests. A broadly held perception is that Musk’s support for the Trump administration’s policies helped to irrevocably tarnish his brand. A stock bump for Tesla this week (after the stock plummeted) did little to conceal the broader trend that is its nosediving global sales rates. Whatever political party Musk is associated with, the simple fact of the matter is that a lot of people think he’s an asshole, and they don’t want to buy cars from an asshole. But even the biggest asshole is welcome with open arms in the Libertarian Party.