MAGA podcaster and former presidential adviser Steve Bannon has declared war on his former boss’ newest influencer, staging a battle on ideological and seemingly personal grounds with the world’s richest man.
In a recent interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Bannon called Elon Musk — who spent nearly $250 million on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and emerged as a top adviser to the president-elect — “a truly evil guy, a bad guy” and vowed “to take this guy down.”
“Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore,” said Bannon, formerly a chief strategist and senior counselor to Trump, who would later dismiss him as “Sloppy Steve.” “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day.”
That would seem a heavy lift, as Musk has practically shadowed Trump since the waning weeks of last November’s election. But recent reports have indicated Trump is increasingly annoyed by his constant presence, perhaps explaining why Bannon, an OG in the MAGA movement, feels confident he can turn the base against the Tesla founder and his cronies.
“Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” said Bannon, referring to two other tech billionaires known to advise the president. “He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
Bannon’s charge of racism is not without merit. In just the last month, it was revealed Musk subscribes to a pro-Apartheid account on X, the social media platform which he has transformed into a leading purveyor of far-right propaganda. It was there he announced his support for Germany’s Nazi-apologist AfD political party — the country’s “last hope,” he posted and compared DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) measures to Jim Crow laws.
But when it comes to race-baiting, Bannon has dibs. He helped co-opt white nationalism, turning it from a tick to a feature of Trump’s GOP. The former Hollywood producer and Breitbart editor also expressed sympathy for, if not solidarity with, the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville and, in 2018, told a crowd of far-right French politicians, “Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists.”
“Wear it as a badge of honor,” he thundered. “Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”
Bannon’s rivalry with Musk goes back to the tech billionaire’s support of H-1B visas that allow companies to sponsor skilled professionals from other countries to work in the United States. Critics like Bannon say the program brings in cheaper labor at the expense of American workers.
“This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious,” Bannon told the Italian paper in an interview flagged on Saturday by Breitbart.
Musk, he continued, was driven solely by his objective “to become a trillionaire.”
“He will do anything to make sure that any one of his companies is protected or has a better deal or he makes more money,” Bannon said. “His aggregation of wealth, and then — through wealth — power: that’s what he’s focused on.”
He went on to allege the Chinese communists own Musk “lock stock and barrel … and he acts like it.” Bannon has previously emphasized the tech executive’s connections to China, where Tesla, the electric car company founded by Musk, has a large factory.
Musk is a “total and complete phony,” he added, reminding the MAGA nation of the Starlink CEO’s reply to a tweet suggesting Americans are “retarded.”
“That pretty much sums it up,” Musk wrote last month in a since-deleted post.
“He went out of his way to mock our movement as racist and retards, and he lost,” Bannon said. “We blew him out of the water. He won’t fight. He’s got the maturity of a little boy.”
Musk has yet to respond to Bannon’s interview.
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