type: timeline_event
Steve Bannon declared war on Elon Musk in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, calling him "a truly evil guy, a very bad guy" and vowing to have him "run out" of the White House. Bannon announced "I made it my personal thing to take this guy down," promising to exile Musk from the MAGA movement by Inauguration Day.
The feud erupted over H-1B visa policy, with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy supporting the program that brings skilled foreign workers to the US, while Bannon and the populist MAGA base opposed it. Bannon accused Musk of having "the maturity of a little boy" and pursuing "techno-feudalism on a global scale," with the "sole objective" of "becoming a trillionaire."
Bannon cast doubt on Musk's loyalty to MAGA principles: "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. His aggregation of wealth, and then through wealth power: that's what he's focused on." The attack highlighted tensions between MAGA's populist-nationalist base and Silicon Valley billionaires who had attached themselves to Trump.
The public feud represented the first major fracture in Trump's second term coalition, pitting the movement's original strategist against its wealthiest benefactor. Musk did not publicly respond to Bannon's attacks. The conflict foreshadowed deeper splits that would emerge as Musk's DOGE operations clashed with Cabinet officials and eventually with Trump himself.