Vice President JD Vance has criticized former DOGE head Elon Musk amid rumors the Tesla billionaire is abandoning plans to form a new political party and supporting Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign instead.
Asked about the rumors in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Wednesday, Vance dismissed them as being “completely fake,” adding, “I’ve never talked with Elon Musk or frankly any other donor about 2028.”
He continued, “I do think that it would be a huge mistake for Elon to go forward with a third party,” before going on to claim that Musk is now perceived by the left as being aligned with right-wing causes.
“The idea that [he] is ever going to go back to being ‘in the middle,’ where Democrats and Republicans both like him, that’s just not going to happen.”
Musk has been openly critical of the Trump administration since leaving his role at DOGE in May, even going so far as to accuse the president of being named in the Epstein files and suppressing their release in order to protect himself.
He had previously floated the idea of establishing a new political party, largely in response to his opposition to Trump’s controversial tax bill.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Musk was now shelving these plans in favor of supporting a potential presidential bid by Vance, telling allies that he was hesitant to alienate powerful Republicans by establishing a new party that could attract voters that would otherwise opt for the GOP.
Vance offered Musk advice in his Wednesday interview, telling Ingraham that if the 54-year-old is unhappy with the GOP, try to fix it from within instead of abandoning ship and forming an entirely new party.
“I think Elon would make a much bigger difference if he stayed loyal to the President Trump’s Republican Party and if he had disagreements, express those disagreements from the inside,” Vance said.
Musk spent $290 million on the 2024 election in political donations made to Trump and other Republican candidates, making him one of the country’s biggest political donors.
He continued to attempt to use his vast wealth to influence politics after Trump was sworn in, offering million-dollar payouts to voters in Wisconsin who had voted in the state’s Supreme Court election and spending $3 million of his own money in support of conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Liberal candidate Susan Crawford would go on to win the election.
Though the pair’s relationship turned icy in recent months, the chill appears to have thawed. Earlier this month, Musk appeared to back Trump’s Washington, D.C., takeover a day after the vice president called for a Trump-Musk reunion.
“He’s obviously got a complicated relationship right now with with the Trump White House,” Vance told conservative website The Gateway Pundit.
“So my hope is that by the time of the midterms, he’s kind of come back into the fold.”
