After leaving his role as a special government employee at the end of May 2025, Musk publicly criticized the reconciliation bill then before Congress. On 5 June the disagreement escalated into a same-day exchange, with Trump commenting from the Oval Office and Musk replying on X. Musk then deleted a post that had claimed without evidence that the government was withholding information about Trump’s association with Jeffrey Epstein, and on 11 June wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.” He left other posts up, including the one calling the bill an “abomination.” The bill was signed into law on 4 July 2025. The two appeared together in public for the first time since the exchange on 21 September 2025, shaking hands at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Glendale, Arizona; Musk posted a photograph of the two captioned “For Charlie.” Reporting in August 2026 described the men as speaking roughly monthly, with Trump privately saying the relationship would never be what it had been.
On 5 July 2025, the day after the bill was signed, Musk announced on X that he had formed an “America Party,” following a poll he had posted on 4 July. No such party was ever registered with the Federal Election Commission. Musk disowned a committee filing made in the party’s name, and the only FEC committees bearing the name belong to unrelated filers. By August 2025 Musk had stepped back from the project, and he subsequently directed spending through America PAC in support of Republican candidates. The party fielded no candidates and secured no ballot access.