Bannon calls Musk ‘evil’ and ‘racist’ as MAGA civil war boils over

There’s a war underway in MAGA world, between two of President-elect Donald Trump’s most power-hungry supporters. 

Trump’s lack of coherent policy goals outside of lowering taxes for the rich has created a power vacuum in the conservative movement, with influencers like Trump benefactor Elon Musk and longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon battling to determine the Republican Party’s policy priorities.

The battle boiled over in December, when Musk unnerved Bannon and many in the MAGA movement with his support for H-1B visas, which he suggested are necessary for employers to hire competent, skilled workers from abroad. 

There were no “good guys” in this fight. Predictably, some of the arguments by H-1B critics were racist, and Musk — who seemed unwilling to grapple with concerns about the visa program — agreed with some disgusting comments during the feud, as well. MAGA world seemed most upset by Musk’s explicit threats and broad swipes at their movement, including his telling a social media user critical of the visas, “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend” and crediting the backlash to “unrepentant racists” in the MAGA movement who he thinks need to be purged from the party.

Bannon went after Musk in 2018, calling him a “man child” and bashing his leadership at Tesla. But the visa debate sent Bannon — who served as White House chief strategist for part of Trump’s first term — and other far-right influencers of his ilk on a warpath against Musk.

And in a recent interview with an Italian news outlet, excerpts of which were published in Breitbart over the weekend, Bannon called Musk a “truly evil guy,” saying he only tolerated Musk because of his outsized wealth and willingness to spend it on the MAGA movement.

“Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore,” Bannon said. He made lofty promises to have Musk exiled from the MAGA movement “by Inauguration Day” and accused Musk of racism. 

“Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” Bannon said. “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?”

Neither Musk nor Bannon — who have their own histories of rank bigotry — are wrong in their assessments of racism in the MAGA movement. I’ve written an ample amount on the unrepentant racism in the movement, which Musk has helped fuel. And I’ve also written about the multiple archconservative men at the forefront of the Republican Party with familial roots in apartheid South Africa. Bannon and his movement’s tolerance for Musk helped create this scenario. (As of Monday afternoon, Musk hasn’t publicly acknowledged Bannon’s comments.)

It’s certainly revealing that both men only seem willing to acknowledge racism as an existential threat to their movement when doing so is advantageous to them. It speaks to their utter disdain for the wing of conservatism the other represents. Usually, conservatives are the ones accusing Democrats of playing the race card. But Musk and Bannon clearly have decks of their own, and they’re laying them all on the table as they each try to become the MAGA movement’s standard-bearer.

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