The populist versus the billionaire: Bannon, Musk and the battle within Maga

WASHINGTON – After word leaked out about a clash at the White House, where members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet challenged the authority of Mr Elon Musk to reshape their departments, one of the President’s top allies, Mr Steve Bannon, quickly piled on.

Mr Bannon, who has characterised Mr Musk as an interloper, a “parasitic illegal immigrant” and a “truly evil person”, suggested that the world’s richest man was weighing Mr Trump down.

“I don’t want to say an anchor or lodestone,” Mr Bannon said on March 7 of Mr Musk on his show War Room, which is watched closely by a number of Trump allies, as well as the President himself. “It’s not that yet, but it’s trending – that is starting to affect everybody.”

The longstanding animus between Mr Bannon and Mr Musk encapsulates a key tension at the heart of Mr Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement. It pits those like Mr Bannon – who want Mr Trump to carry out a more fully populist agenda – against ultra-wealthy interests, epitomised by Mr Musk, that occupy key positions in the President’s orbit.

Mr Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement, but Mr Bannon’s vocal disdain for Mr Musk has been noticed by the President. In mid-February, the President told Mr Bannon that he wanted him to lay off the attacks on Mr Musk and for the two men to sit down privately, according to two people familiar with the comments.

That meeting has not happened yet, and it is not clear when or if it will.

But Mr Trump’s effort to mediate between the two men, which has not been previously reported, reflects the President’s awareness that Mr Bannon has a powerful megaphone with key parts of the Maga base.

Mr Bannon has been preaching about populism since the Tea Party wave slowly started to remake the Republican Party in 2010. He and his acolytes see Mr Musk as an opportunist with no ideological stake in the Maga movement, who only wants to advance his own interests.

But Mr Bannon’s vision for the movement also has its fair share of critics for its alignment with right-wing nationalism, which he has labelled a “badge of honour”. “Let them call you racists,” Mr Bannon told a far-right gathering in France in 2018. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists.”

Mr Musk, who was a critic of Mr Trump for years before becoming one of his biggest benefactors, has seemingly given little thought to the Maga movement and its future. Mr Musk has been privately irritated by Mr Bannon’s attacks at times, according to people in touch with him. But he has only rarely engaged with Mr Bannon. “Bannon is a great talker, but not a great doer,” Mr Musk posted on X, his social media platform, in February. “What did he get done this week? Nothing.”

In a statement, Ms Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said: “We do not comment on private conversations that may or may not have occurred. President Trump is thrilled with Doge’s (the Department of Government Efficiency’s) historic work under Elon Musk, and he will continue to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse in our federal government on behalf of the American people.”

A spokesperson for Mr Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Bannon’s attacks appear to be as much about attention as anything, although his allies say he is fighting for what he views as the soul of the Maga movement. His supporters are quick to mention him as a potential candidate for president in 2028, noting that he finished in second place in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC’s) 2028 Republican primary straw poll in February, though far behind Vice-President J.D. Vance.

“Steve is looking down the pipe,” said Mr Raheem Kassam, a close ally of Mr Bannon and editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, a right-wing news site.

“He’s looking into the future, and he’s saying, ‘Oh no, there’s an atheistic, amoral, CCP-aligned, unaccountable foreigner that’s going to be the head of the Maga movement at some point’,” Mr Kassam said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, “and I think he’s right to express the concerns in the way he’s doing it.”

For now, though, the Maga movement is personality-driven, devoted primarily to whatever Mr Trump wants it to be regardless of the inherent contradictions. As he has taken control of the Republican Party over the past decade, Mr Trump has led the quasi-populist movement by knitting together a wide range of factions and ideas, many of which conflict with one another.

Mr Bannon served as chief strategist during Mr Trump’s first term before an acrimonious split in 2017, but he was among the people most devoted to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr Trump. Because of that, Mr Bannon has credibility with some of the supporters Mr Trump needs to be successful, and with Mr Trump himself.

Mr Bannon has clear ideological disagreements with Mr Musk, particularly over immigration. Mr Bannon vigorously disagrees with Mr Musk’s support for H-1B visas, which allow high-skilled individuals to work in the US. Mr Bannon has also warned that billionaires like Mr Musk and other tech executives – many of whom supported Democrats before backing Mr Trump – will abandon the Maga movement.

“Bannon has been a dyed-in-the-wool conservative for his entire life, and he believes very strongly in these core values,” said Mr Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who worked on Mr Trump’s first presidential campaign with Mr Bannon. “He is always naturally suspicious of people who pop up and don’t have the pedigree that he has.”

Mr Musk, in some ways, came out of left field as a die-hard supporter of Mr Trump.

Throughout Mr Trump’s first term, Mr Musk had a lengthy list of critiques. He privately disparaged Mr Trump’s tariff policies, his obsession with coal mines instead of gigafactories and his hardline stances on immigration. More broadly, Mr Musk railed against those who, he believed, had become tribal in their politics, according to people familiar with his comments.

In 2023, Mr Musk signalled that he would support the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, before changing his mind as Mr DeSantis’ campaign struggled out of the gate. In February, Mr Musk posted on social media that he loved Mr Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”.

Among the Maga faithful, both men have deep fan bases. Mr Bannon is one of the movement’s original content creators, dating back to his days overseeing Breitbart News and now through the War Room. Mr Musk, meanwhile, has endeared himself to the movement through his transformation of X, formerly known as Twitter, into a hub of conservative activity.

“Musk is the volume button,” Mr Bennett said. “You can say things now on Twitter and you can reach millions and millions of people, where 10 years ago you would reach tens of thousands. He has made that available to us. There are a lot of people who are in the right-of-centre movement who are very reliant on the medium to distribute their content. They are very grateful to him for allowing that to happen.”

The admiration for both men was on full display in February at the annual CPAC, where Mr Musk and Mr Bannon each received a rapturous reception.

“They’re both very popular in the conservative movement,” said Ms Mercedes Schlapp, who was Mr Trump’s White House director of strategic communications during his first term, and is married to Mr Matt Schlapp, the chair of the conference. “They were both warmly received at CPAC, where they put their differences aside and really addressed the President’s achievement.”

Mr Musk made an unexpected appearance at the conference, brandishing a chainsaw and sporting a black Maga hat instead of the trademark red – describing himself as “dark, gothic Maga”. In his CPAC interview, Mr Musk acknowledged that he used to be “politically neutral” but leaned Democrat. He said he had switched to supporting Mr Trump “when I realised I was a fool”, citing cancel culture and efforts to infringe on personal freedoms.

Mr Bannon spoke directly after Mr Musk, but he shied away from any direct confrontation. Instead, Mr Bannon praised Mr Musk as “Superman”. He also pointedly noted that history books “ain’t gonna remember me or Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity”.

“They’re gonna remember two things, Donald Trump and Maga, OK?” he said.

In an interview with The New York Times in February, Mr Bannon said there were fundamental differences between him and Mr Musk.

“He’s still not a populist nationalist, he’s a globalist,” Mr Bannon said of the tech billionaire. “He and I have a chasm that is probably insurmountable.”

As for Mr Musk, his future intentions regarding politics are unclear. But one thing is not: Having been born in South Africa, he is ineligible to run for president – a fact Mr Trump has noted publicly. NYTIMES