By Hadas Gold, CNN

(CNN) — The brief détente between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump took its last breath over the weekend, as the billionaire and once top Republican donor announced he would form a new political party.

Musk distanced himself from his former role as “first buddy” to the president, spending much of Independence Day weekend and Monday promoting his new “America” party, while bashing both Republicans and Democrats. He even resurfaced unfounded conspiracy theories, accusing the Trump administration of misleading the public about disgraced financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The breakup came after Trump signed his massive domestic policy agenda into law. Musk lobbied hard against the bill, arguing it adds too much to America’s debt and undermines a great deal of the cost-saving initiatives he set out to achieve with his Department of Government Efficiency.

In response to Musk’s threat to start a new political party, Trump threatened to investigate the billionaire’s government contracts and subsidies. Last week, Trump said DOGE may become a monster that may “go back and eat Elon.”

Musk fires back

Musk, who once said he loves Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”, responded with a sad-face emoji to one person on X who wrote that Trump had always planned to “use you for his benefit and drop you right after but you didn’t want to hear it.”

“The America Party is needed to fight the Republican/Democrat Uniparty,” Musk posted along with several memes suggesting the Democratic and Republican parties are the same.

Instead of mounting a challenge to every seat across America — which would face legal and political hurdles — Musk said the party would instead focus on a handful of targeted Senate and House races.

“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws,” he wrote.

“Extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield,” he wrote in another post about the party’s strategy.

It’s not clear what, if any paperwork, has been filed with the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service or any state-level entities. Several filings that appear to be trying to impersonate Musk’s party, as well as some of his associates, have popped up. Musk said in a post on X he would be reporting at least one of them to the FEC.

A spokesperson for Musk did not respond to a request for comment about organizational plans around the new party.

Over the weekend, Trump dismissed Musk’s third-party ambitions and called him a “train wreck” in a long post on Truth Social. Musk responded by reposting memes suggesting he couldn’t care less about the man he spent more than $275 million to get back into the White House.

“What is truth social, never heard of it,” Musk posted about the president’s social media platform.

Musk also resurfaced his accusations that the Trump administration was purposefully hiding information about the case surrounding the death of Epstein.

The posts came as the Justice Department on Monday released a memo stating that Epstein had died by suicide and that there is no evidence he kept a “client list” as alleged for years by conspiracy theorists.

Musk over the past few days has not gone so far as to connect Trump personally to Epstein. But Musk made that allegation last month during his first public breakup with the president. Musk later deleted and expressed regret over those posts following phone conversations with Trump, Vice President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

But one major indication that Musk has not yet completely cut himself off from the Trump administration: He still follows the president, as well as many of its top officials on X — for now.

The-CNN-Wire
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