What does former senior Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon think of current Trump senior adviser Elon Musk? He’s shared plenty of public insults. “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant,” Bannon recently told a reporter. “He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.” He dismissed Musk’s cost-cutting projects in government as “performative.”
This latest Bannon salvo at Musk reflects the sharpening of already rough-edged rivalries within Trump’s circle between hard-core populists (like Bannon) and hyper-libertarians (like Musk). For his part, Musk has mostly ignored Bannon’s attacks. In a recent tweet, Musk dismissed Bannon as “a great talker. Not a great doer.”
That may be in part because Musk knows Bannon and others have little real leverage to use against him. In past administrations, members of the president’s party in Congress or major party donors could use their influence with the chief executive to sideline an unpopular aide. But Musk’s money gives him a potent weapon to use against lawmakers fearful of well-funded election challengers, and no donor has ever offered a candidate more than Musk gave Trump in 2024. Former Trump Communications Chief Anthony Scaramucci predicts that though the president won’t “jettison” Musk, his influence on Trump is “not sustainable.” We’ll see.
The sniping will continue as Musk racks up both successes and failures in the coming weeks. But the only person who can undermine Musk is President Trump, who has given no indication of dissatisfaction.