Elon Musk is an ‘evil person,’ Steve Bannon says
Steve Bannon has launched a stinging attack on Elon Musk, calling him a “truly evil person,” in comments that deepen hostilities between two men who have been influential advisers to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he’s inaugurated,” Bannon said of Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. “He won’t have a blue pass with full access to the White House. He’ll be like everyone else.”
Bannon was an architect of Trump’s presidential election victory in 2016 and served for a time as chief strategist during his first term in the White House. Since his release in October from a four-month stint in federal prison for a contempt conviction, Bannon has renewed his war of words with Musk, who poured more than a quarter of a billion dollars into Trump’s election win in November and has since become a constant presence at his side.
In the interview, published last week, Bannon said of Musk: “He’s a truly evil person. Stopping him has become a personal issue for me.”
The insults reflect broader tension on the right in the United States about the direction of the movement that Trump has championed and fears that Musk — the world’s richest person and the owner of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — could use his influence to sideline powerful figures within that movement to promote his own agenda. Musk does significant business with the federal government as the CEO of SpaceX, and also runs the automaker Tesla.
