The Opinions - Elon Musk’s Revenge Campaign

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

The New York Times columnists Michelle Cottle and David French discuss whether the moment might be right for a third party. And French tells the story of the time he briefly considered a run for president as a third-party candidate.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle, and I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion, and I am here with opinion columnist David French today. David, hello. Michelle, it's great to be with you and it's just the two of us. I know, which means we get to get extra juicy digging into Elon Musk. This week, he announced he wants to launch a new national political party.

Now, there is a long history of, how do we put this gently, underwhelming third party attempts in this country. Does anybody even remember that there is a forward party at this point? I had forgotten, Michelle, until just now. Thank you. You're welcome, David. That's another service I'm providing here today. But I'm just acknowledging the fact that Musk has more money than God was the nation's biggest known political donor last year.

I want to talk about why, even with that, it's so hard to get a third party off the ground and a little bit broader I want to get into it. If there might be something different about this particular moment. I mean, certainly for a lot of people, this feels like a fraught and fragile, period. in the Republic's history. So let's just dig in. I want to know. Start us off by kind of orienting us. You're a guy who's open to the idea of a third party, right?

I mean, you're third party curious. Michelle, not only am I opened the idea of a third party, but I almost mounted a third party campaign in 2016, which is its whole other story, but gives me a lot of insight as to the practical problems and practical realities, But to make a long story short, back in 2016, Bill Crystal was trying to recruit a third-party candidate, Bill Crystal, who founded the Weekly Standard now runs the bulwark. He asked him at Romney.

Met Romney said no. Ask some other folks. They all said no. And then came like nine millionth down the list and came to me. And I said, I'll think about it. And I did actually think about it for about 72 hours, which was about 71 hours and 59 seconds too long. Oh, come on. But I did absolutely think about it, no question.

So, yeah, I think that as a concept, what we're dealing with is a lot of theoretical demand. In other words, there's a lot of people who will say that they want it. The problem is when you get to the actual person and the actual position, what are the positions? Who is the individual? And that's where it gets so, so, so tricky, of course, because you're moving from the notional, where you can sort of fill in all of your ideals, and this is what I imagine a third party would be, and it can just be the perfect utopian little alternative in your mind,

then when actual living human beings step up and say, hey, we've got an idea, we could do that, then it starts to fracture almost instantaneously. Okay, the idea of you running a third party candidacy is so delicious. But given your experience, let's go ahead and, Give me a temperature check on this latest Musk venture. It's calling it the America Party.

Is it remotely viable? But my immediate thought is hell no. But let me get you to go in here first. I mean, how can I say this? I think of the third party... Say it not gently. Yeah. Okay.

Of the third party ideas, one part of the concept of the America Party is actually smarter than a lot of the others. third-party ideas. I would then say Elon Musk is exactly the wrong person to implement it. Because unlike a lot of people who have a kind of a bipartisan appeal, he has a bipartisan kind of sense of revulsion now. So because he has taken on Donald Trump and taken on MAGA, so a lot of Republicans really, really, really hate him. When he's switched from sort of being

a green techno-futurist to being like Donald Trump's wealthiest, the left, and everyone left his center turned on him. So he's in many ways the least appealing person possible to start a third party because he's alienated both wings. He's been driven out of both wings. He's a uniter, David. He's united everyone against him. Yes, it's uniting against is the problem. However, this sort of idea that, no, no, no, we're not trying to sweep away everything, but when targeted races so that there is a third party to contend with in the Senate so that you can't have atrocities like the Big Beautiful Bill that were just passed, where you can have some independent voices. I think that's, there's actually some real promise

to that idea, in part because it doesn't depend on as many third parties do with sort of the man on the white horse coming in with all the fame and all the resources and triggering kind of the last thing we need, which is yet another kind of populist revolution. Yeah, I do agree with you that I think the targeted approach is better. I mean, in part because one of the big problems in getting a third party off the ground is that elections are run by the states. And you have 50 different states with a gazillion different rules than trying to get on the ballot and all those states can be gobsmackingly complicated. And it's not like Musk has some grand vision for the country, as my sense. I mean, in part, he's just irritated that he didn't get his way.

And he wants to have a lever in which to make everybody's life unpleasant. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot about this that just sort of radiates, I'm angry, I'm mad, and I'm wealthy. So what happens? When you or I are angry, Michelle, we do have the pen. We can turn to the pen. We can explain our position. Elon Musk has one of the world's largest social media outlets that he can use.

But that's not enough. That's not enough. He can go further. He can start a party. But look, he is very angry at what's happened, and he's very impulsive, and all of this is going to undermine him. You know, and on the one hand, he has helmed multiple, very, very successful companies. He actually does have a knack for accomplishing things in the real world.

That was pre-politics and pre-Douge. Doge was a debacle. It was an absolute debacle. It was a humbling moment for him. Very humbling moment. And unlike what many people do when they have humbling moments where you sort of retreat for a minute, he's just gone ahead and leaned in. Yeah. I mean, this feels like a revenge campaign because he's had a falling out with his presidential BFF and he didn't get his way on the bill.

Is there a coalition, though, that could. could be rallied around a third party at this moment. And what do you think that would look like? You know, that's the big question. There's a quick answer to this, which is very optimistic, and there's a longer answer to this that gets super pessimistic fast. You never bring me anything optimistic, David, so I want to do this. No, no, I'll start.

I'll start. So there is something called the exhausted majority in the U.S. This is a documented phenomenon that does exist. And this isn't, this is about two-thirds of Americans, actually, about two-thirds of Americans who believe that neither party listens to them. So they feel unseen and unheard in public discourse. They're sick of the partisan vitriol. They're very angry at the tone of politics.

In other words, the tone is exhausting. And they actually want compromise. They actually want people to come to the table and come to agreements. And so if you're starting a third party, and it says, you're not being heard. Everyone's going to yell, yay, two-thirds of the people. There is no compromise. Thundrous roar.

You know, we need to sit down and listen to each other. Thunderous roar. And then you move on to one concrete policy position. And then all of a sudden, that's coalition is going to start to just crumble. There's the butt. I was waiting for the butt. Because this exhausted majority isn't the same thing as the moderate middle.

Okay. that it's not a synonym. The exhausted majority actually spans across the political spectrum. So you'll have people who are pretty far on the left who are part of the exhausted majority. You'll have people who are pretty far on the right who are the exhausted majority. But they don't agree with each other, say, on tax rates or health care policy and the nuts and bolts things that sort of put together a party. And so, you know, when the Republican Party, which is really our last successful emergent third party movement, they had an idea. You know, they were against slavery, the expansion of slavery. They were against polygamy, for example. They had an idea.

And so if you're organizing a third party around sort of a tone or a vibe, that's a lot harder than organizing a third party around an issue or an idea. So yes, there does seem like a demand, but no, when you dive into it, it doesn't seem very easy to fill that demand. So I was poking fun at the Forward Party, which is the centrist party that Andrew Yang and a bunch of people got together and launched recently. And I think Elon Musk has in fact been talking to Yang, whose candidacy in 2020, Musk endorsed. For me, the Forward Party's problem is exactly what you're talking about. They are a lot about, you're tired of polarization and we're going to be anti-polarization. And they'll throw in some electoral reform to help the process. But beyond that, it's not entirely clear what they're kind of mobilizing, galvanizing idea would be. So I want to be a little less ambitious in my sweeping view of parties emerging. And look at the Reform Party in 92. Ross Perrault popped up, this quirky business guy, with a poppero. few of the American economy and how both parties were driving up the debt and threatening the American prosperity. And he pulled, you know, like 19 percent of the electorate, which was basically enough to, you know, tip the scales in Bill Clinton's favor. So it's not that he went anywhere.

And the Reform Party hung on for several years. but they did get people talking about the debt and America's, you know, profligate spending to the degree that that became a real issue during the Clinton years. So they did something. Yeah. Is there at least the room for a third party to get enough traction that they could impact? And it sounds like that might be what Musk is looking to do, although it's not entirely clear in what directions. You know, I do think there is, and there is a term, I believe David Shore coined this term called popularism instead of populism, popularism.

So in essence, you know, I don't want to do violence to the definition, but just orient yourself around popular policies that are consistent with your worldview. And are there a set of popular policies that could cement or create, if not a majority, at least a plurality in certain parts of America? I think, yeah. I think there are a lot of popular ideas that are sidelined because the basis of the party won't allow them to be put forth.

They wield an absolute veto. So, for example, in immigration, this is almost the paradigmatic issue where there is a kind of a broad popular policy that is stymied often by extremes. And one of that broad popular policy just stated in the broadest brush is more secure borders, relief for dreamers, and others who are contributing well in America right now. And you have that kind of give and take, and you actually can

build a coalition there. But certainly on the right, the Stephen Miller side of the world is absolutely positively no to that. And so it just keeps getting cut off. It just keeps getting stymied. And you can do this in other issues as well. But I'll tell you, Michelle, the area where it's the most difficult to do this is also the area where third parties often circle back to. And that is the deficit. This was a big thing for Ross Pro. And a lot of people are against the deficit. A lot of people are very concerned.

I'm one of them. But here's where the problem, it gets really unpopular, really fast if you want to talk about how to narrow that deficit. because you've got to have some tax increases or you're going to have to have some spending cuts that aren't just this foreign aid budget that everyone sort of thinks is like this, you know, infinite pool of money that's just being thrown, you know, overboard overseas when it's really a tiny fraction.

Tiny, tiny percentage. It's just very hard to deal with the deficit without doing unpopular things, yet that is often the siren song that tries to get people to form a third party. Yeah, the devil in the details. again and how do you rally people around that. Is this a moment for a third party to rise up,

or is this simply an opportunity for one of the existing major parties to rethink what they've got to do and to grab this group in the middle? It feels, Michelle, like the easiest path here is to just have the major parties shape up a bit. You know, so, for example, there's this, you know, there's been a lot of commentary and a lot of discussion about the insurgent

Mamdani campaign in New York. And I find that much less interesting. I have to confess than a lot of people because I feel like it's kind of an artifact, not of the appeal of socialism, but of the fact that the establishment candidate was a guy who was just run out of office after a sexual harassment scandal. And so if that's what you're doing here, like if you're, if you're, if, if you've got these big establishment parties. And look, in the drama we just went through with Joe Biden and his obvious cognitive decline and how much there was one part of the establishment

that was trying to shield all of that from us and actually trying to put somebody forward to the American public who wasn't fully up to the job. I mean, this is the kind of establishment work that's being done in some of these parties and then don't get me started on the total capitulation of the Republican establishment to Donald Trump. So part of these things that, well,

maybe the simplest, most direct route to better politics is just the party establishments of the parties that we have getting better at what they do. But their inability to do that for, you know, a very long time is one of the reasons why this third party demand keeps bubbling up. It's a persistent absence of the best and most obvious solution that leads us to longer shot alternatives. So does the fact that what we seem to have now is an insider outsider split? So in order to, as an outsider, bubble up and get people mobilized. It seems to take a particular kind of person. I mean, so this is what Donald Trump started as, right?

He started as an outsider who not politics as usual. Now, he happened to be able to take over the Republican Party and completely consume it. But it seems like you're almost by definition looking at a kind of politics that's personality or charisma driven by these figures. Totally. Which lends itself to demagoguery, and that just makes me very nervous. I mean, what is your thought on the dangers of that? Oh, I'm so glad you raised that because this is not just relevant to third parties. It's actually relevant to the Republican Party right now, which is demagogues can build personal movements.

They're generally not great at building institutions or maintaining institutions. And so one of the things I think you're seeing right now with MAGA is you're actually beginning to see the sneak peak of the demolition of the movement after Trump leaves because he's assembled this coalition of cranks and outsiders. And the only thing they have in common, really, is they've agreed to support Donald Trump. So you've got a lot, this very fractious coalition

that's united under the charismatic leader. and then when the charismatic leader is gone, what is it any longer? I know that there are a lot of people who say, well, it is an America-first, neo-isolationist or spheres of influence kind of approach. You know, you got to, that'll be news to an awful lot of Republicans who literally, Michelle, believe it or not, still think that,

and I've heard this as recently as this year, you know, Donald Trump is more like Ronald Reagan and any Republican president of my lifetime. Wait, what? What? So there are still people who are thinking when they're voting for Trump, they're voting for something that's a, it's still normal republicanism. And then you've got millions of others who are saying, nope, we're blowing up everything that was normal republicanism. And so I think the Republican Party is going to pretty quickly see what it's like when it's organized around a cult of personality and the personality is gone. I know that you're not an expert on the progressive left, but the thing that has, and we've talked about this before, the thing in Republicans redounding to their benefit is the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't exactly have its act together as well. Do you think that it would benefit from a few, I don't know, revolutions, some anti-establishment folks shaking things up the way the Republican Party has? You know, going back to looking at the Tea Party,

Do they need their own tea party? I mean, just generally speaking. I don't mean the content of the experience, but. Or even the vibes. You don't even want the vibes of that experience, Michelle. He didn't enjoy all those tricornered hats or whatever. So as somebody who was like present at the creation of the tea party and used to represent tea party groups in court,

I will tell you there was a very rapid devolution of the tea party. So at the very beginning, there was a lot of hope and optimism around it that it was actually a movement designed to rediscover the Constitution and first principles. And so you could know you're interacting with somebody on the Tea Party because they're carrying around a pocket constitution. Or they had a copy of Hayek's Road to Serfdom, right? Road to Serfdom actually very briefly was like a new bestseller, right? And so I say new bestseller, a bestseller again, you know. And so, but then it very quickly turned into factional infighting, ideological litmus testing, which the real irony here, Michelle, is that the Tea Party

pioneered this idea of cancel culture on the right where if you didn't agree with the whole litany of conservative positions, if you weren't all the way down the line, this is the 2012 primary than, for example, then you were out, you were a squish. Because you had this ideological litmus test with no variation. And there were people coming in saying, hey, maybe we need to be more appealing to the working class. And they would say, no, definitely not. And then along comes Donald Trump. And he sort of breaks the paradigm because he's completely outside of the box from the Tea Party on policy. But he's exactly where the Tea Party is on pugilism. And so he had that temperamental match with the Tea Party.

And I would just say, when you build a movement centered around populist pugilism within your coalition, get ready. You're not going to be able to control that thing. If you build a movement around anger and resentment, even if it has a policy frame to begin with, after a while the policy will go away and you're just left with the anger and resentment. And here we are, as the United States. States of America. Yeah. So historically, third party candidates have mostly been spoilers. I mean, we're talking about, you know, I'm thinking Ralph Nader in 2000. Now, that's at the presidential level. But looking farther along, do we think there's a case where they could be something other than spoilers on a national level?

I mean, is it just impossible? It's definitely not. I mean, let's go back to Ross Perrault. A lot of people forget this, Michelle, but that campaign was so wild because there was a point at which Bill Clinton was in third. Ross Perot was leading in the polls. H.W. Bush was second.

Bill Clinton was third. If you have heard and read a lot of gloom and doom commentary about the Democratic Party after 2024, Some of the gloom and doom commentary when Bill Clinton was in third place in the polls after the Democrats had already lost three consecutive landslide presidential elections, a lot of people are writing the obituary of the Democratic Party at the presidential level. And then Ross Perrault drops out. Why?

One reason is because he thought Republican operatives were going to ruin his daughter's wedding. And I'm not making this up. Okay, sure. Yeah. So we think politics are crazy now. There's been a lot of crazy times. So he drops out. He comes back in.

I guess the wedding was fine, I don't know. He comes back in after dropping out, and he still got 19% of the vote. And at that point, his reputation that had devolved to the point that he was seen as so mercurial and crazy that he played the song crazy at his election night celebration.

Okay. Props for software. I don't know if you remember all of the, Yes. No, I don't remember all of this. Yeah, and so it is a, you think about that, a guy is leading, drops out, comes back, still gets 19%. So with a major charismatic national figure, is it possible? I would say, yeah. Okay, so what advice as a former almost third-party candidate would you give to Elon Musk right now? That's a great question.

I would say my first piece of advice would be to hand the reins over to somebody else. That would be my first piece of advice. But beyond that, I would say, start small. Think target, be smart, and target a race or two or three, a Senate race or two or three. Be strategic. Be disciplined. Don't overpromise and definitely don't under-deliver. That's so not his wheelhouse.

Oh, I know, I know. but I do think targeting the right races, and even going down to the house level, targeting the right races and the right places is going to be very important because I do not see a national figure in our extremely divided and polarized time that is so unifying and so universally respected

that they could sweep in. And I mean, the only person I can think of who everyone loves in America is Dolly Parton. Yes! And Dolly, we need you. on the cultural wall. We don't need you in politics. But there's very few people in America who have that kind of universal appeal. I mean, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Dali Parton, I mean, there are some celebrities, but I guarantee you the instant that they open their mouth and start talking actual policy,

a lot of that shine would start to come off. But- Oh, yeah, Dahlie Pardons too smart for that. Yeah, yeah. Way too smart. So I don't know, Michelle, I'm not optimistic, but over the long haul, supply tends to meet demand, and there is demand for alternatives in American politics. Okay. Well, we're going to cling to that, and we're going to leave it there for now. Although, I feel like you need to come back so that we can talk about maybe soft launching your 2028 campaign. We can talk to Dolly as an advisor, if you like. Well, you know, how we reach my constituency of dozens will be like, what's the marketing campaign to reach those dozens of people, that'll be topic number one.

Okay. We're going to get you hooked up. All right. David, thank you. Thank you. It's always fun. This was fun. Thanks, Michelle.

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