Steve Bannon, former advisor to President-elect Donald Trump and a podcaster who calls his right-wing audience on “War Room” his “army of the awakened,” is determined to get billionaire and new Trump ally Elon Musk far away from the White House.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Bannon said that he’ll get it done before the president-elect takes office in just over a week. “I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he’s inaugurated,” Bannon told the outlet. “He won’t have a blue pass with full access to the White House. He’ll be like everyone else.”
Bannon did not respond to an email from Vanity Fair asking how he plans to oust Musk.
The pair have been dueling over what the future of the Make America Great Again strategy ought to look like—and who should be let into that movement’s ranks and the country’s borders. Bannon, and some other staunchly anti-immigration MAGA talking heads like Laura Loomer, are against the highly coveted H-1B visa program—which allows employers to hire foreign workers “in specialty occupations or as fashion models.” Specialty occupations require the visa applicant to have at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent, per the Department of Labor. This kind of visa often goes to workers in fields such as math, engineering, and technology.
Enter Musk—the richest man in the world who also happens to be the CEO of multiple companies in these fields, and who himself came to the US as an international student and says he worked using an H-1B visa. (According to reporting from Forbes based on H-1B data from fiscal year 2024, Tesla, which Musk runs, “was among the leading employers of new foreign-born scientists and engineers.”)
“The reason I’m in America, along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong, is because of H1B,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, in late December. “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face,” he continued, “I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
In tandem with railing against the program’s detractors, Musk also said the visa system could use “major reform” and was “broken.”
That week on War Room, Bannon called Musk a MAGA “convert” and told him to “sit in the back and study.”
“We love converts,” Bannon said. “But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.”
