Staunch Trump ally Steve Bannon offered tepid praise to tech billionaire Elon Musk after repeatedly dragging the chair of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Bannon said Musk is “probably, on the oligarch side, the least offensive, as far as that goes," according to CNN. The response came after he was asked about his recent remarks blasting Musk as an oligarch and a techno-feudalist.
“Look, with all the oligarchs, and he’s probably, on the oligarch side, the least offensive, as far as that goes — none of them are our allies. They’re just — it’s an alliance of convenience. Because we won, they joined us,” Bannon told CNN.
He insisted, "They can’t be trusted."
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"They can’t be trusted because they’re oligarchs. They don’t have any vested — they’re not vested in our system. They’re going to always go where power is. And I keep telling people, they will flip on us as soon as it’s convenient to go to the other side, because they’re all progressive Democrats," he said.
Even so, Bannon said he's a fan of Musk's work at the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been tasked with slashing trillions out of the federal government, and has drawn fierce criticism for gutting large swaths of various agencies.
“I thought Elon’s answers were fine, right?” Bannon said when asked to respond to Musk’s eyebrow-raising appearance at CPAC. “I don’t agree with Elon on everything, but the one thing I do think is very powerful is DOGE are like, it’s like a shock to the system, right?”
Bannon has rebuked Musk in recent weeks, including calling him a "parasitic illegal immigrant" who wants to "impose his freak experiments and act as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions."
He has also warned MAGA supporters that Musk and other tech billionaires "will forsake us" and don't genuinely support their movement.