WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Victoria Churchill: Will the 'America Party' Fracture the GOP?

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Elon Musk’s launch of the 'America Party' could trigger a realignment within the Republican base. With Musk leveraging billions and a massive social media following to target GOP swing districts, could this bold move could sabotage Trump’s 2024 plans?Victoria Churchill, a U.S. Political Reporter for DailyMail.com, covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate and a seasoned Capitol Hill reporter, joins WRFH to discuss. 

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Weirman. With me today is Victoria Churchill, a U.S. political reporter for Daily Mail.com covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate. How are you doing today, Victoria? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. Always great to be back with the great folks at Hillsdale. Absolutely. So today we're going to be talking about Mr. Elon Musk. He's always busy. And this time, he seems to have started a new party. Is that? right? Yeah, so he did officially file for his America political party with the FEC, the Federal Elections Commission. He did this about a week ago now. And, you know, obviously that in itself is interesting for a number of reasons. You know, last year, during the 2024 election, he had his America PAC, the Political Action Committee, which was active in some swing congressional districts, swing states, and, you know, actually contributed quite a bit to Donald Trump's re-election. But now this America party is completely different. You know, before I went into journalism, I spent almost a decade in political activism,

grassroots organizing. Yeah. You know, this idea that, you know, taking a party infrastructure and building it from the ground up is quite complicated. You know, you have to do things like, you know, obviously you have to set up things like party conventions. You have to get party leadership, you know, ideally at the state and the county level. And then those people train candidates. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see if this is something that Musk and whoever's advising him politically can turn around.

But I'd say, you know, that's what you want to do if you want to build a party that is nationally competitive. And, you know, I'd say even in infrastructures, whether that's the Democrat or the Republican party, because I've kind of worked in my past, both kind of on the party side as well as on the campaign side. And, you know, I'll tell you even from having worked for a major party, there's lots of different times where a campaign will come in and think that a party infrastructure exists in a certain area. And then you actually find out it's not the case. And, you know, again, that's even seen with major parties.

But the other thing that you have to consider is that there may be kind of a pack party hybrid, which, you know, if Musk does continue to go through with this, you know, that might actually. actually be more of the lens that he's going for because as we kind of saw, you know, I don't necessarily think he wants this party to be nationally competitive. I think he wants it to be, you know, really, I think kind of a thorn in Trump side or a thorn in the Republican side. And so, you know, he may only look at having investing in infrastructure in areas that are similar to what he did with his PAC last year, which is your swing states, your swing congressional district. So basically you think that maybe instead of this America party being a serious long-term project, this is a potentially more of a pressure tactic?

You know, I think so. And again, you know, even if you look at the U.S. Senate, which of course I primarily cover for the Daily Mail, you had times just over the last month when the Senate was debating the, you know, big beautiful bill, Trump's budget bill. Yeah. And, you know, Musk was siding with some voices in the, you know, a Republican camp, such as your Thomas Massey's, your Rand Pauls, who, you know, believe in fiscal conservatism, something that Musk decided that he wanted to push for as well. And, you know,

for example, Massey, he is a Republican, of course, like Rand, so a member of the president's own party, and they went ahead and, you know, they voted against legislation with Massey in particular, because Rand isn't up for another couple years, but Massey being a member of the house, he's going to be up again in 2026. in this upcoming election. And so what you're going to have there is, you know, the president is already putting political pressure. He's already putting ads out against Massey.

And Musk was one of the people that stepped up and said, you know, you might not back him, but I will. Yeah. So that, yeah, that kind of brings us back to the question of what actually prompted Elon Musk to start the formation of this new party. Maybe in case some of the listeners haven't been like too much into the loop. If you could just get like a brief rundown on. what specifically.

Yeah. So, you know, again, he really promised to do this during the course of passing Trump's big, beautiful bill, the budget bill that just worked its way through Congress. And, of course, that Trump signed on July 4th. So, you know, just about 10 days ago now as we're recording this on the 14th. And Mosque basically was unhappy because, you know, he did spend quite a bit of money, I guess, to the average person, quite a bit of money to him. him, it's probably kind of like Trump change. I think I saw that he spent about $250 million

on his American Act, which he had last year. And so Musk put this pressure, or at least tried to put pressure on Republicans to not support the bill. You know, he kind of had this rhetoric going around on his ex-account. Of course, X being formerly Twitter, you know, a couple of lines that I remember covering, you know, he said that there's no Democrat Party and Republican Party. There's just the Porky Pank Party, which, you know, of course, refers to the idea of congressional pork. So putting a lot of things into legislation that basically sweetened the deal for one senator or another to vote for a bill, essentially. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

And I'm Emma Weirman talking with Victoria Churchill, a U.S. political reporter for Daily Mail.com, covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate. And we're talking about Elon Musk's America Party. So what role did the Freedom Caucus and its members play in the debate over the budget bill and the fallout and such? Yeah, well, you know, I actually saw an interesting op-ed the other day. I believe it was in the Washington Examiner. It might have been the Daily Color, but it was definitely in a conservative outlet the other day. And, you know, the argument that this columnist had made was that Rand Paul in the Freedom Caucus made the budget bill better.

And you might look at that if you are somebody that believes in fiscal conservatism and you're like, okay, but you know, there's still a bill, even though it does do things that Republicans really wanted to do and campaigned on like cutting taxes, it's still going to add a lot to the national deficit, which is what a lot of these criticisms levied by Musk, by Massey, by Rand, really kind of came out of is that, yes, they did want to keep the Trump tax cuts, which is what this bill is proposed as, but they didn't want to do that at the cost. of adding to the deficit and ran in particular and, you know, even his father before him when he ran for president like almost 20 years ago, you know, their whole thing was not increasing the national debt. And of course, since then, the debt has continued to increase, whether that's through Republican or Democrat administrations. You know, that's an ugly fact that if you're a conservative, you want to say Republicans are all about saving money. But if you look at the deficit increase, you know, that hasn't been the case because it's increased under both parties being in hour. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, kind of getting back to your point, I actually talked to one member of the

Freedom Caucus, Congressman Ralph Norman from South Carolina. He's a pretty vocal member of that caucus. And, you know, he had said after the bill was passed, he was like, you know, it's not perfect. I voted for it to keep the president's agenda going. But what we're looking at that's about to happen in Congress is the rescissions packages. And so those are going to be money that. Congress has already allocated to the administration, that the administration is now saying, actually, we're not going to spend this money, take it back. And so, you know, there was some debate whether there could have been kind of a two-bill idea to pass the tax cuts and then do everything else. But realistically, just because of the way the alliance has fallen, Congress and power plays are made,

that wasn't really potential. It was kind of an all or nothing piece of legislation, which is, you know, kind of one of the criticisms of not only this bill, but of a lot of things that actually get passed out of Washington. Again, kind of going back to Musk, like this is one of his criticisms, is that it's stuff full of a bunch of things that people might not necessarily like, but that's what you need to do to get those votes at the end of the day.

And, you know, particularly if members of, you know, the party that's in power, in this case being the Republicans, wanting to pass that legislation out, you know, regardless of, some Republicans voting against it, where, you know, in the Senate or the Republicans have a 53 vote majority, but because they had three defections, which were Tom Tillis, Susan Collins, and of course, Rand Paul, President J.D. Vance had to go in and, you know, be that difference-making vote to get that 51 to pass that legislation. And then in the House, it was a little bit more

wiggle room, but, but, you know, still not perfect. There was still, I believe, two Republicans that voted against it in the House. And those were Thomas Massey, of course, who I mentioned before. And then Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. He also didn't support the bill in the House as well. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. And I'm Emma Weirman talking with Victoria Churchill,

a U.S. political reporter for Daily Mail.com, covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate. And we're talking about Elon Musk's America Party. You were just mentioning a moment ago that the fact that we are actually continuing to increase our national debt with things like this big, beautiful bill and such. So with Elon Musk's criticisms, do you think that they hold weight to some extent? And what do you think of his reaction in starting this party? Is it proportional? Like, can we understand why he's upset? And if not starting a whole new party, then what can we do or what should we do to try to

keep this national debt in check? Yeah, you know, I mean, it is an interesting question. You know, I wonder if there is a fiscal conservative Republican party that would potentially emerge out of this. And again, I don't really think he's trying to play the game nationwide, at least not at this point. I think what he can do is, and, you know, I think in this piece that we're, that we kind of even have is the idea for this conversation is that like there is precedent for independent candidates running. And, you know, I was actually shocked by how many, for example, members of the U.S. Senate, historically have been elected outside of the two major parties. Of course, right now we have two. We have Peter Welch of Vermont.

Or excuse me. Yeah, obviously Bernie Sanders of Vermont. And then we have the other independent senator as well. And so, you know, that's two out of the current hundred that we have. Oh, wow. But obviously, Bernie is a Democrat, a socialist Democrat. you know, he doesn't shy away from that. And so, you know, I kind of wonder if we have a fiscally conservative version of the Republican Party that is its own party.

You know, I would say the Democrats might, might do that and actually kind of really create their own Democratic Socialist Party in which, you know, kind of does exist. But a lot of the times it's they endorse in a in a Democrat race. Like, for example, like what we're saying right now with the New York City mayoral race with, yeah, Mom Dami. You know, he is a self-avowed democratic socialist. and he gets the endorsement of that group, but still within the larger Democrat umbrella. Okay, so there is at least some precedent for a third party succeeding on a national scale

that we've seen. And again, they're not necessarily part of an independent party, but I'd say when you look at these races, there are people that have ran outside of the two major parties. You know, one case that kind of I brought up also in that piece was, for example, in Kansas a few years ago, I guess almost a decade now in 2014, I believe it was there was a candidate who was really backed by Democrats, but he ran as an independent because the Democrat Party did not nominate a candidate. And so really, I think, for example,

like a Rand Paul, which again, I don't think he would leave the Republican Party, but say if the Republican Party decided not to endorse him and not nominate him as their candidate, you know, he could potentially go to an America party and say, whoever the Republicans nominate is not going to fare well. Let's not have a Republican candidate in that race and let's have them as an America Party candidate. And so, you know, I think somebody like that could potentially pave the way for something like that.

Again, obviously, you know, Musk and Rand have had those, this kind of back and forth. You know, we've all seen play out on X, but there was a report just the other day that Rand was golfing with Trump. And so, you know, I think they do have their disagreements. But I'm not sure how much of that is publicly for show versus how much of that is kind of major internal visions, if you will. Okay. Overall, the, how do you think the GOP insiders and lawmakers feel about what is going on with Musk and this new party? Yeah. And, you know, I think I included this in the piece as well. I talked to a couple members of Congress, as I mentioned, Ralph Norman, or, yeah, excuse me, Ralph Norman being one of them. And then the other one being John McGuire from Virginia. So I covered his election last year. He was somebody that had primaried an incumbent member of Congress from the right. Actually, the former House Freedom Caucus chairman is who McGuire beat out in a primary because he thought the Freedom of Caucus chairman, former Congressman Bob Good, wasn't pro-Trump enough because Good was actually one of the people that had endorsed DeSantis in the presidential race. But so, you know,

I talked to those two lawmakers and they were kind of saying that they weren't concerned about any potential backlash from Musk in their votes. And, you know, at the same time, they really were not actually, you know, they were kind of thinking that Musk would go back to business and not really engaged in politics. And then, of course, a few days later, he did follow this party. But that's kind of the reaction from inside Congress. but there's actually also allies of Trump in the business world that are kind of actually making, making it known that they are unhappy that mosque isn't in the business world as well.

James Fishback is one person who I'm actually hoping to interview here in the next couple of days, but he's actually a former outside advisor to Doge. and he runs an ETF investment, I guess, fund firm, which just listed on S&P 500 a few days ago. But he did have Tesla as part of that. And then he actually said that basically the founding of this American party shows that, you know, Musk isn't putting Tesla at the forefront of importance for him. And so he actually removed Tesla from that pack of, you know, stocks that. that people that want to use his index can buy into.

And so, you know, like I said, he's kind of one of the more vocal ones, but I'm interested to see whether there will be more backlash to Musk in the business world saying, you know, focus on your businesses, we're not going to invest in them, or we're not going to encourage people to invest in them. Yeah, that is actually really interesting. I'm curious to see how it pans out as well. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Emma Weirman, talking with Victoria Churchill, a U.S. political reporter for Daily Mail.com.

covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate. And we're talking about Elon Musk's America Party. So back to the politics of it. How do you think that with all this occurring, the 26 primaries or even the 2020 presidential landscape could be affected? Yeah, you know, that's a good question. You know, I think right now, and this is actually my piece that I did this weekend just yesterday, I think right now the Trump base, the MAGA base, however you want to refer to them, is trying to figure out what they themselves are going to look like in a post-Trump world, right? Right.

Yeah. His term limited to two terms. His time in office is, you know, quickly dialing down. Yeah. He is also 79 years old. So by the time he leaves office, he will be in his early 80s. Yeah. And, you know, I think for him, he might even want to see what that legacy.

looks like, of course, I think that's a concern of his, I think this bill that did just pass Congress is going to be a huge part of that. But, you know, on the other hand, we're seeing, you know, some pretty big fractures within the MAGA camp, like particularly over the Sampstein stuff. Oh, yeah, big fractures. Yeah. And like I said, you know, this is something I was covering just yesterday. You know, you have voices like Tucker Carlson, like Megan Kelly, like Steve Bannon, And even like Marjorie Taylor Green, who's definitely obviously one of Trump's biggest allies within Congress. And his voices are saying, you know, we trusted you. We elected you.

We voted for you. You know, Megan Kelly in particular, for example, right? Like she was on the outs with Trump for really the majority of his first term, or if not the entirety of his first term as well as basically his whole time out of office. And then, you know, he brings her up at a rally just a few days before the election. And so, you know, there's really a lot of people that have. put their faith and have really put kind of their reputations on the line with Trump. And like this Epstein thing was something that he promised time and time again on the campaign trail that he would really.

And, you know, now over the weekend he's posting, you know, it's not a big deal. Nobody cares about it. A little sense. Yeah. And, you know, that's just one of those things that's raising eyebrows. And so, you know, I'm interested to see whether there will be more as kind of MAGA searches for, I guess, a post-true identity, if you will. And then, of course, seeing, you know, the MAGACAM versus the rest of the Republican Party,

how does that play out? Because obviously, those powers are definitely a dominant force in the Republican Party. But, you know, if you remember, there's a lot of Republicans that don't like Trump or a lot of people that have been Republicans for most of their lives that don't like Trump. Then again, if you're talking about kind of the future, not only of your party, but, you know, if you're one of these voices, your career, right? even if you're in your 30s or 40s, you want to have maybe another 10, 20, 30 plus years left of your career. What are you willing to split with the president on?

And, you know, I think this is one of these, I guess, big early fissures. But I'm sure there will be more to come as people try and figure out, you know, where their loyalties lie in kind of this post-Trump world. Is there anything else that we should keep an eye on with Elon Musk's potential America part? party or anything on Capitol Hill that we should keep an eye on before we close out today. Yeah, you know, money is obviously a driving force in politics. We all know this. So, you know, I'm interested to see whether his party raises any money. That's kind of an often early sign of viability, particularly when you look at candidates. But, you know, obviously with Musk, he may not want to raise any dollars from outside sources because he has so much of his own. So that will definitely

be an interesting thing to follow. You know, federal elections, commissions, FEC reports come out every quarter. So, you know, with Musk, this will have been filed just at the start of the, I guess, third quarter now that we're in in July. But, you know, definitely keep an eye out on that

over the next couple months. And then, you know, see if he is starting to build any infrastructure in any of those key swing states, key swing districts. And I think those will be, early signs to see how he will play in any races, if he will at all. All right. Well, thank you so much for all of that.

It was really informative. Thank you so much for having me and can't wait to be back on soon. All right. Our guest has been Victoria Churchill, a U.S. political reporter for Daily Mail.com, covering Capitol Hill with a focus on the U.S. Senate. And I'm Emma Weirman on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.