Steve Bannon Praises Elon Musk ‘Despite Massive Ideological Differences’ And Calling Him a ‘Traitor’ In The Past

Former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon credited billionaire Elon Musk with playing a key role in Donald Trump’s election victory earlier this month while discussing Musk’s role in Trump’s orbit on Wednesday’s War Room podcast.

Bannon lauded Trump’s appointment of Russ Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, arguing that the Project 2025 co-author will efficiently take an ax to the federal government as promised.

“We have an opportunity to do this all in the first hundred days. And Vivek and Elon have teams up there,” Bannon began, before recalling his recent interview with Puck News.

“And this is why I said I think the interview was in Puck last night with the great Peter Hamby. One of the last what we call ‘boys on the bus,’ the old-fashioned kind of journalists that really do the old-fashioned journalism. I told them one thing has impressed me with Elon,” Bannon said, adding:

And, look, we have huge ideological differences, including about the Chinese Communist Party. Let’s put a pin in that for a second. I said what’s fascinating to me is that he put money up for the least glamorous part of the victory and I said, ‘Hey was not, without Elon and Charlie Kirk and Miriam Adelson putting that money up and you this audience or the hop lights for the get out the vote, going door to door, the canvasing that got the low propensity voters to the polls, we wouldn’t have had the massive victory. So he deserves a seat at the table. Also, what he’s doing on DOGE is this is pick and shovel work. This is not glamorous.

In April 2023, Bannon ripped into Musk, who has long dubbed a “man child,” and called him a “traitor.”

“Elon Musk, who’s a traitor, not even an American, there’s another guy like Murdoch and like Soros, these guys, they get citizenship because they want to grift off the American people,” Bannon said at the time, adding:

They are not Americans. They do not have America’s self-interest. He’s over there in Shanghai with the CCP money opening up the new factories to take all the business from the one they quote-unquote, “We did in Texas.”

Bannon also discussed DOGE, Musk’s soon-to-be-created Department of Government Efficiency, and Vought’s potential role in cutting down on deficient spending, arguing that in concert the two approaches might get the U.S. back to pre-pandemic spending levels.

Watch the clip above.