Donald Trump is holding strong under pressure from Democrats and Elon Musk

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Elon Musk is eager to enter big-time politics with the America First Party, but he risks repeating Bloomberg’s fate — spending billions and achieving zero results. No support, no team, no influence — meanwhile, the crisis at Tesla and pressure from Trump are intensifying. The new party currently looks like a reaction to personal business failures rather than a serious challenge to the system.

Trump under fire from all sides

Recently, Trump has called into question his image as a successful and heroic politician who goes against the rotten establishment and stands firmly for his ideals. He has gained new enemies within his MAGA movement, while retaining his old foes among the Democrats. And the Democrats, who for a long time were unable to develop a positive program and resorted to primitive criticism of Trump, seized on the tragedy in Texas as a saving chance to continue the political struggle. Large- scale flooding in the eastern part of the state led to the deaths of at least 80 people, including several dozen children. This happened on July 4, when the White House was pompously celebrating US Independence Day.

Until January 2025, Trump vehemently accused Democratic officials of inaction, incompetence, and callousness toward ordinary Americans. But during his administration, the US National Weather Service, which forecasts such force majeure events, failed to predict the storm in time, and weather models made fatal errors. Democrats immediately linked this to purges of the state apparatus and the dismissal of climate scientists, as Trump’s decree led to the reduction of 600 employees out of a total of 4,900 at the same meteorological service. Some departments of the service stopped working around the clock due to staff shortages, and in 40% of departments, the proportion of vacant positions exceeded 20%. In Texas, leadership positions were vacant at the time of the tragedy.

In addition, FEMA, which specializes in flood control, among other things, has cut its staff by 20%. This happened on the eve of the election, and now, by analogy, Democrats are accusing the White House of depriving the US of the ability to track weather anomalies as part of Trump’s fight against the “green agenda” advocates. Everyone remembers Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005, which caused Bush Jr.’s ratings to plummet, and even under Biden, the response to climate disasters was extremely negative. To counteract this negative effect, Trump’s team will make every effort to resolve the situation in Texas. This is because Trump supporters have no desire to give liberals ammunition to stop the purges in Washington due to image problems.

In addition, the Democrats themselves continue to suffer from old problems, and a telling scandal has erupted around socialist Zohran Mamdani, who won the New York primary. Born in Uganda, Mamdani emigrated with his parents to the US in the 1990s and unsuccessfully attempted to enroll at Columbia University. In his application, he identified himself as both “Asian” and ‘African’ in an attempt to take advantage of racial quotas, even though he himself advocates for the same system of “affirmative action”. As the Harvard case showed, Asians have the lowest chances of admission — 25% compared to 95% for blacks. Mamdani, like Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in the past, tried to circumvent the system to use it to his advantage. As mayor, he promotes a racial and gender agenda in schools and fights against voucher schools, where whites and Asians predominate. But instead of equality, this leads to increased cultural conflicts and a decline in the Democratic Party’s ratings, despite Trump’s crisis.

Musk launches a new party to split the Republicans

Trump’s position posed a much greater threat to the rebellion of his most loyal supporters among MAGA activists and valuable allies in his 2025 campaign. While Tucker Carlson was interviewing Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, expressing dissatisfaction with the White House’s pro-Israel stance, Elon Musk’s discontent intensified. This was a consequence of the final adoption of the “big beautiful bill”, which cut Tesla electric cars off from government subsidies at a time when, against the backdrop of raging cultural wars within America, Tesla’s sales were already collapsing, with a 13% drop in the second quarter. Tesla is already lagging far behind its key competitor, the Chinese company BYD, and without subsidies, there is certainly no reason to expect sales growth or the emergence of new electric vehicle production facilities. This was the reason for Musk’s hysteria, and the Democrats’ plans to ban the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, which were beneficial to the “Republican” billionaire, have now been canceled.

And although Trump logically stated that Musk was well aware of these plans even before the election and is behaving strangely, the businessman once again raised the issue of creating the American Party and presented a strategy for a new political force that should split Trump’s Republicans. On Independence Day, Elon Musk conducted a poll on X about creating an “America” party to destroy the “pseudo-bipartisan dictatorship”. In 40 minutes, more than 140,000 people voted, with 64% in favor. Musk proposed a tactic: to win 2–3 seats in the Senate and 8–10 in the House of Representatives in order to obtain a “golden share” in Congress and block unwanted laws. He first voiced this idea in June, after a conflict with Trump, whose new “environmentally hostile” law could cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars in sales of “green” quotas.

As a result, Elon Musk announced his “march on Washington” and the creation of the “American Party”, deciding to intervene in politics with renewed vigor. Similar attempts were made by Theodore Roosevelt with the Progressive Party and Ross Perot in the 1990s, but they all failed. Today’s public fatigue with the two-party struggle in Washington has created fertile ground, but it is still difficult for third forces to overcome the systemic barrier: signatures, money, and strong candidates are needed. The victory of socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York primaries remains more of an exception. Musk currently lacks both structure and experience, and his initiative resembles the unsuccessful campaigns of Kanye West and Mike Bloomberg. The main question is whether he will be able to influence the outcome of the election by playing the role of spoiler for the Democrats and Republicans. In the battle for control of Congress — especially in states like Texas and Ohio — even limited intervention by Musk could shift the balance of power, provided he does not lose interest, as in the case of DOGE, or reach an agreement with Trump.

Musk`s political project faces difficulties

It is telling, incidentally, that two of his Indian employees, who came to the US as migrants, were appointed to the leadership of the American Party registered by Elon Musk. Of course, the same applies to Musk, who is originally from South Africa, and this immediately sparked a wave of criticism from Trump’s allies, who accuse Musk of ignorance of the basics of American politics, where new immigrants do not usually participate as active players. Moreover, against this backdrop, theories began to emerge that Musk’s candidate could be Hindu Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly headed the DOGE agency with Musk and was his main protégé in the 2025 Republican primaries before switching sides to Trump.

Ramaswamy plans to participate in the Republican Party primaries for governor of Ohio in 2026 and does not intend to change parties. This complicates Musk’s task — he has no strong candidates for the American Party. There is talk of a possible collaboration with Tucker Carlson, who criticizes

Trump and irritates the “hawks” in Biden’s circle with his isolationist stance, especially after his interview with the Iranian president. However, Carlson has no aspirations to enter politics and can only support Musk as a media figure.

All these factors underscore the weakness of Musk’s project. At best, he could elect a few congressmen or senators who could criticize both parties and create the effect of an “alternative”. But even that is unlikely. But even that is unlikely. Most likely, Musk will simply spend significant funds, as Mike Bloomberg did in 2020, without any noticeable results. At the same time, his business, including Tesla with its falling sales, risks suffering, especially if he does not improve relations with the increasingly powerful Trump — this is already becoming an alarming sign for Musk.

For example, former CIA Director John Brennan, who headed the CIA during Barack Obama’s presidency, may be charged with perjury for allegedly lying about Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. It all started when CIA Director John Ratcliffe revealed that the story of “Russian interference” in the 2016 election was fabricated by intelligence agencies under Obama’s control. According to Ratcliffe, a report with the desired narrative was compiled in a matter of days, which prevailed over the facts, and the document was supported by loyal agencies selected by Brennan. Thus, Clinton’s defeat became an opportunity to merge party interests and intelligence, which became detestable to Trump. In the minds of Americans, Russia went from being a “sleeping bear” to a threat, and the fabrication of the “Russian threat” became a convenient tool not so much to justify anti-Russian sanctions and the refusal to engage in dialogue, which fueled the Ukrainian crisis, but rather to attack Trump, which is why the new US president tried to resolve the Ukrainian crisis as quickly as possible.

Moreover, revenge against those who wanted to put Trump in jail and deprive him of his future is a sacred cause for the 47th president. And despite the fact that Donald Trump is currently under pressure from the Democrats and Elon Musk, their excessive zeal could cost them dearly in the future.