Far-right political strategist Steve Bannon is fed up with Elon Musk.
Bannon promised to oust the tech billionaire from President-elect Donald Trump’s orbit in a new interview with the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, published on Wednesday, where he called Musk “racist” and a “truly evil guy.”
In excerpts of the interview translated into English for Breitbart News, Bannon vowed to “have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day.”
“He will not have a blue pass to the White House, he will not have full access to the White House, he will be like any other person,” the former chief strategist for the Trump White House went on.
Bannon has joined a field of anti-immigrant Trump supporters who turned against Musk after he said he’d “go to war” over America’s H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers with “highly specialised” skills and technical education.
Musk called H-1B immigrants “critical” to tech-driven companies like his own SpaceX and Tesla in a post on X late last month. The South African-born mogul was also once an H-1B visa holder himself.
But in Bannon’s interview with Corriere della Sera, he slammed the program as corrupt.
“This thing of the H-1B visas, it’s about the entire immigration system is gamed by the tech overlords, they use it to their advantage, the people are furious,” he said.
Trump appears to have taken Musk’s side for the time being, calling the H-1B system a “great program” in a December quote to the New York Post.
Beyond Bannon’s policy dispute with Musk, he told the Italian paper he thinks the controversial CEO is “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.”
“I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon added. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it; I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.”
Musk has more or less embedded himself in Trump’s world since helping usher the Republican back into the Oval Office last November. Along with a reported $277 million in campaign donations, Musk cultivated immeasurable levels of positive public sentiment for Trump through his social media platform, X.
Though Musk’s support earned him an unofficial advisory post in the next administration, The New York Times’ main source for Trump intel, journalist Maggie Haberman, recently reported that Musk’s presence has begun to wear on the soon-to-be two-term president.
“Trump does complain a bit to people about how Musk is around a lot,” she revealed during an episode of the On with Kara Swisher podcast earlier this month.