Originally, I planned to use my normal gag sequel headline format and title this Musk II: Electric Boogaloo. Too on the nose? YMMV.
After a few months absent from the political fight, Axios reports today, Elon Musk has jumped back into the electoral fray with both feet ... but mainly his wallet. This past summer, Musk had threatened to bankroll a new major political party to capture disaffected Republicans and Democrats. Now, however, Musk has returned to the GOP to provide funding for the upcoming midterm cycle:
Elon Musk has begun funding the GOP's House and Senate campaigns for the 2026 midterms — an indication his relationship with President Trump has thawed since their messy breakup earlier this year. ...
The intrigue: Musk's latest donations came after he had dinner last month with Vice President Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Taylor Budowich, a former White House deputy chief of staff who's still wired into the administration.
Vance, who's close to Musk, helped organize the dinner at the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory.
The catalyst for the initial rupture with Trump had been the withdrawal of the nomination of Jared Isaacman as the new head of NASA. Musk had pushed Isaacman, a personal friend with whom he worked closely on SpaceX as an astronaut, and had reacted furiously when Trump dropped the appointment over Isaacman's past support for Democrats. His anger led to angry attacks on the Trump-led reconciliation bill and a personal attack related to the Epstein files. However, the "thaw" began a few months later, and the two began appearing together occasionally again.
It probably helped that Trump reversed himself again on the NASA appointment. He renominated Isaacman as NASA Administrator, who won approval from the Senate committee last week, and is expected to be confirmed before Christmas:
Jared Isaacman, the commercial astronaut, founder of Shift4 Payments and self-made billionaire, will likely be confirmed as the administrator of NASA before the end of the year.
With strong bipartisan support, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted in favor of confirming Isaacman to serve as NASA administrator on Monday evening.
The next and final vote likely happen in the Senate before congressmen leave for Christmas.
For that to happen – and for the current administration to carry out those policies, and others – Republicans have to hold serve in the midterms. Musk knows this, and knows that attempts to launch third parties, or even just walking away for a cycle, would mean that the Trump administration will get derailed by Democrats. They will run the same playbook they ran during the first Trump term, with impeachment hearings, criminal referrals, and so on.
There may be one complication to this plan. Earlier this year, Musk's political involvement created a lot of hostility toward Tesla and no small amount of unhappiness among its shareholders. Tesla's board might not be the only problem if Musk re-enters the electoral fray. Musk reportedly wants to take SpaceX public next year, hoping to generate tens of billions in new investment:
The Wall Street Journal and The Information first reported about a possible IPO last Friday, and Bloomberg followed that up on Tuesday evening with a report suggesting the company would target a $1.5 trillion valuation. This would allow SpaceX to raise in excess of $30 billion.
This is an enormous amount of funding. The largest IPO in history occurred in 2019, when the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company began public trading as Aramco and raised $29 billion. In terms of revenue, Aramco is a top-five company in the world.
Now SpaceX is poised to potentially match or exceed this value. That SpaceX would be attractive to public investors is not a surprise—it’s the world’s dominant space company in launch, space-based communications, and much more. For investors seeking unlimited growth, space is the final frontier.
The risk to SpaceX will likely be less than with Tesla. Tesla is one of any number of auto manufacturers; at the moment, SpaceX is really the only game in town for reliable space missions, both manned and unmanned. Even the Russians are having trouble with their missions, and China's having issues as well. Nevertheless, as everyone will recall, the political blowback for supporting Trump and the GOP turned vicious and irrational the last time around, and this could impact the eventual IPO success that is being planned in the middle of this cycle.
Musk has almost certainly calculated all of these variables and has decided to move forward anyway. His wealth gives him lots of flexibility, of course, but let's not lose sight of the damage his wealth has taken already for his political engagement and the risks of more damage ahead. That takes some guts, especially to come back for Round Two.
Perhaps using a sequel is the wrong model. This might be a story of old war allies that split apart while backing away from fights, only to realize that they had no choice to continue them together. Play it again, Sam.
Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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