Bannon Escalates Musk Fight: 'He Is a Truly Evil Guy'

Steve Bannon and Elon Musk were on opposite sides of a high-profile rift in Trump world last month over visas for skilled workers. Bannon just escalated the fight in a big way:

• "He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy," Bannon said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, excerpts of which were printed at Breitbart. "Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it—I'm not prepared to tolerate it anymore."
• The podcast host, who still holds much sway within MAGA, said Musk "should go back to South Africa," reports Mediaite. "Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, White South Africans … making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?" That may also refer to fellow tech titans Peter Thiel and David Sacks, per the Guardian.

• Bannon said Musk's No. 1 priority is increasing his own wealth, with the goal of becoming a trillionaire. "I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day," he promised, referring to next Monday. "He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person." Musk has so far not returned fire.
• Musk runs the new Department of Government Efficiency with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, a nongovernment office. He and Ramaswamy have championed H-1B visas widely used by tech companies, and Bannon complained that "the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords—they use it to their advantage. The people are furious."
• The conflict illustrated the uncertainty about what kind of role Musk will play, and for how long, in the second Trump administration, per the Washington Post. His views are often in direct conflict with the "nationalist vision" embodied by the Bannon camp of Trump supporters, the newspaper notes.

(More Steve Bannon stories.)