Top Trump Ally Says Elon Musk Is a "Parasitic Illegal Immigrant"

Yahoo

19-02-2025

Long before Elon Musk became Donald Trump's buddy-in-chief, the real estate mogul had another right-hand man: Steve Bannon.
Bannon was a right-wing media crank, alleged white supremacist, and self-described "economic nationalist." He served as Trump's chief strategist from Trump's first inauguration until August 2017, when Trump let him go just a semester later.
Now the former Trump staffer is back in as a Trump-allied media figure — where he's been taking some fiery shots at Musk's unelected role.
"Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant," a wound-up Bannon told UnHerd, a right-wing British publication. "He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions."
It's true that Musk's immigration status during his early in the United States was dubious, with his brother recalling that "we were illegal immigrants." But like many people fortunate enough to be able to access sound legal aid, he was able to fix his status and eventually gained US citizenship in 2002.
If you imagined that gave him sympathy for others in a similar bind, you'd be wrong; just today, he was mocking the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.
Nevertheless, the tiff does illustrate a tension in Trump's current orbit. Bannon's media venture, "The War Room," is a widely popular conservative talk show in which Bannon and his guests spout national populism talking points — so while both are allied with Trump, Bannon represents a decidedly different brand of MAGA compared to Musk's techno-libertarianism.
The former Trump staffer frequently blasts the president's new Silicon Valley buddies Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, whom he refers to as billionaire elites, using the same type of populist rhetoric Trump invoked when running for his first term.
He's not wrong — the two tech billionares had a combined net worth of nearly $666 billion at the time of Trump's second inauguration (though not nearly as wealthy, Bannon doesn't exactly represent the little guy either — he's worth an estimated $20 million.)
Comments like these aren't new for Bannon, who in early January called Musk a "truly evil guy, a very bad guy," vowing it was his "personal thing to take this guy down."
It's an interesting invective coming from Bannon, whose role as "chief strategist" has some parallels to Musk's role as "senior advisor to the president."
At one time called the "second most powerful man in the world," Bannon's gig was tailor-made for him by Trump, just as Musk's was made up by executive order. Bannon's tenure as Trump's lapdog was also derided by the media, and his meddling in agencies like the National Security Agency were likewise mired in secrecy as he took defacto control of national security policy.
We don't know how long Musk's unelected term will last, but we might have a good blueprint — Bannon's tenure ended in disgrace eight months in, and the fallout resulted in numerous investigations as well as a four-month prison stint, which may weigh in the sentencing of his most recent guilty plea for conspiracy and money laundering.
If Musk's critics have one thing to hope for, it's that the mogul will follow the path blazed by Bannon — which ultimately leads to the courtroom.
More on infighting: Sam Altman Says He Feels Sorry for Elon Musk and His Bottomless Insecurity