Elon Musk torched Steve Bannon Thursday, rekindling a MAGA civil war from Donald Trump’s transition period.
The world’s richest man refused to stay quiet on X after he learned his podcaster foe had lightly criticized the Department of Government Efficiency’s priorities.
“Bannon is a great talker, but not a great doer,” Musk wrote. “What did he get done this week? Nothing.”
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Ouch.
Bannon, 71, has long been a pain in Musk’s side, but the billionaire had ignored his repeated attacks this year. Their beef during Trump’s transition period centered on H1-B visas—Bannon against, Musk in favor—but quickly got personal, with Bannon vowing to have Musk ousted from Trump’s inner circle by inauguration day.
That ouster never happened, of course. Musk has enjoyed the spoils of working hand-in-hand with Trump while Bannon, a former adviser to the president, has been relegated to talking about the administration on his six-days-a-week podcast.
The DOGE leader, who posts incessantly, has mentioned Bannon by name on X only three times over the years—to call him “evil” in 2023, to address Bannon calling him an “immature man-child” in 2018, and a third time Thursday.
Musk’s outrage this week came after one of his favorite X accounts, Ian Miles Cheong, shared a post that seemingly referenced a lengthy interview Bannon had with The New York Times on Friday.
Bannon told the Times “the defense budget is an obscenity and must be cut,” adding that taxes will go up unless defense spending is slashed. The comment appeared to be a slight dig at DOGE, which has focussed on cutting spending from bureaucratic agencies of the government, which makes up a fraction of the budget by comparison.
The timing of Musk’s lashing out may leave Bannon scratching his head. Compared to December and January, the podcaster had significantly softened his comments on Musk this week and he even praised him for his work with DOGE. In his Times interview, Bannon said Musk had “genius level intelligence.”
Bannon had similar praise for Musk in a podcast appearance with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan. He told her on Tuesday that Musk had a “brilliant analytical and engineering brain.”
Perhaps Musk has been too busy to see Bannon’s newfound praise. The 53-year-old has, after all, posted 583 times (and counting) on X since Friday—an average teetering close to 100 posts a day—and is spearheading DOGE, which is ruffling feathers across Washington and within the federal government.
Bannon has active social media accounts that blast out clips of him throughout the day, but he does personally post his in-the-moment thoughts like Musk does. That means we will likely have to wait until Friday morning’s War Room podcast to hear what Bannon thinks about Musk claiming he has accomplished nothing this week.
