MAGA loyalists and conservatives on Monday were criticizing Steve Bannon after his close relationship with late financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was revealed, and more information has surfaced among right-wing influencers.
The former White House chief strategist's name and correspondence with Epstein were revealed in the Justice Department's drop of materials, showing photos of the two men and emails detailing Epstein's advice for Bannon, including how "Epstein was working with Bannon to 'rebuild' his own public image as 'a philanthropist,'" Salon reported. The newly surfaced information prompted a wave of scrutiny among several public figures.
Among the critics were billionaire and current Trump ally Elon Musk, former Trump advisor Roger Stone, MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza and Malaysian right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong.
Musk, who has faced his own questions over his personal correspondence with Epstein, had a sharp response for Bannon.
"Bannon is evil," Musk wrote on his X platform, sharing an image of Bannon with Epstein taking a selfie in a mirror and Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire convicted of fraud.
Stone lobbed a startling accusation against Bannon that included unfounded suggestions of unlawful disposal of human remains. Stone, who has been in a years-long feud with Bannon, was citing an email to Epstein in 2013, which suggested that sulfuric acid was used on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, to maintain a reverse osmosis plant to purify water.
However, Stone ran with the initial implication – that Epstein had purchased sulfuric acid to dispose of bodies – to smear Bannon with a shocking accusation.
“The same thing Steve Bannon used to dissolve his victims in the bathtub of the home he rented in DC,” Stone wrote Monday in a social media post on X to his nearly 1 million followers.
D'Souza made a sarcastic quip that Bannon was a "man of the people" and asserted on X that Bannon was behind the backlash for Trump and MAGA after the Epstein files were released.
"The Left is desperately trying to blame Jeffrey Epstein on Trump and MAGA, and now Steve Bannon—who portrays himself as the embodiment of MAGA—is giving them the ammunition to do it," D'Souza wrote.
Cheong called Bannon "a fraudster of the highest order, from the start ‘til now," in a post on X.
“The fact that Steve Bannon was a Trump-hating degenerate and an ally who was trying to clear the ‘good name’ of Jeffrey Epstein through the production of a documentary is only the tip of [sic] filth-encrusted iceberg,” Cheong wrote.