FAMILY FEUD

Steve Bannon Ramps Up His War on ‘Parasitic Illegal Immigrant’ Elon Musk

The former Trump adviser blasted Musk’s DOGE for not making big cuts fast enough and for failing to target the Pentagon.

Steve Bannon unleashed a new torrent of insults at Elon Musk on Tuesday, escalating an ongoing feud with President Donald Trump’s new favorite confidant.

“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant,” the former media impresario turned Trump White House adviser turned podcaster, told UnHerd of the president’s South African-born lieutenant. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.”

Bannon, who represents the first wave of Trump’s supporters who coalesced around his populist, nativist message during his first bid for the presidency, has been fixated on Musk, the broligarch poster boy for Trump’s new term.

NO LOVE LOST

Musk Calls Out Bannon to Rekindle MAGA Civil War

Josh Fiallo

Trump has tasked Musk—his benefactor, surrogate, and adviser—with finding $2 trillion in spending cuts through the DOGE task force he was appointed to lead.

(The Trump White House curiously claimed Musk is not the leader of DOGE on Monday, despite both men repeatedly indicating otherwise, in a response to a lawsuit targeting the task force.)

That has pitted Bannon’s populism, rooted in stoking working-class grievances, against Musk’s burn-it-all-down ethos that has already seen DOGE marshal the firing of thousands of federal employees, access the systems of key departments, and push to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Last week, Bannon warned the Trump administration not to take a “meat ax” to Medicaid, which insures more than 70 million low income and disabled Americans.

“Medicaid, you gotta be careful,” Bannon, 71, said on the Thursday episode of his War Room podcast. “Because a lot of MAGAs are on Medicaid, I’m telling you. If you don’t think so, you are dead wrong.”

Bannon told UnHerd that Musk and DOGE’s priorities were in disarray, failing to achieve enough cuts while ignoring the massive Defense Department budget.

“DOGE is sitting there with the budget, but where the f--- are the DOGE cuts?“ he asked. ”We are 30 days away from approving a budget for the entire year with $2 trillion already baked in, and not one penny of anything that DOGE found. It’s ludicrous.”

He added: “I notice there is a hesitancy to cross the Potomac and go to the Pentagon. I would like to see $100 billion taken off the $900 billion budget right now, which is really a trillion.”

MAGA MELTDOWN

Bannon Rips Musk for Putting ‘Vendetta’ Over Trump Mission

Josh Fiallo

Bannon told the outlet that, while he considers DOGE merely “performative,” he still thinks Musk has a purpose, calling him an “armor-piercing shell that’s delivering blunt force trauma against the administrative state.”

Bannon, meanwhile, has absolutely kept the faith in Trump. He told UnHerd he’s “exploring” options to secure the president a (currently unconstitutional) third term.

“I don’t have right now a tremendous amount of support on this legally,” he conceded.

In December, when he first floated the idea of a third Trump turn, Bannon suggested the Republican standard bearer could get around the 22nd Amendment—which says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”—by arguing it’s open to interpretation whether it applies only to “consecutive” terms.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

ADD THE DAILY BEAST ON GOOGLE

Sean Craig

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.