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Quick Take…The Musk/Trump split and the new “third party”

Kit Knightly

There’s an episode of Mad Man – great series, highly recommend – where the Madison avenue ad executives of Sterling Cooper are tasked with rescuing the public reputation of a pet food brand which was just been revealed to be using horse meat in its recipes.

They suggest changing the name, which the owner flatly refuses to contemplate. He argues ALL pet food uses meat from retired horses, and people will forget in time. They executives respond by letting him sit in on a focus group. Having witnessed the violent dislike of his brand from pet owners in person, the owner agrees to the name change.

The point of the story is simple – sometimes a brand is so tarnished you have to rebrand and start again.

Which brings us to Elon Musk’s very public split with Donald Trump and the suggested “new political party”. Supposedly this is all about the “big beautiful bill” clashing with Musk’s views on efficiency and reduced spending.

Our take is rather different.

Donald Trump’s brand as a politician was simple – he was anti-establishment and America first. Libertarian isolationist. Cut spending, cut foreign aid, deregulate the market, boost US business and perhaps most importantly, no more more wars.

That’s his brand, but the reality – despite hysterical wailing and enthusiastic glazing from journalists on each side – is that it’s just more of the same.

The Trump admin has promoted digital IDs, it has stood with Israel and – probably most damagingly – it has bombed Iran. Regardless of if you believe the supposed reality of that “act of war” or not, in concept it is a massive betrayal of his base.

Essentially, the tarnishing of the Trump brand is so complete that Trumpism now needs to evolve in order to survive. We’re looking to a future of Trumpism sans Trump, which means Musk (and maybe Vance) and a third party option.

We’re at that point where everyone knows about the horse meat, and the only solution is to change the name.

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