Three days before President-elect Trump's inauguration, Steve Bannon heard unwelcome news.
The former adviser to Trump was close to wrapping up the two-hour morning video stream of his show, Steve Bannon's WarRoom, when he learned that Monday's inauguration would move indoors due to extreme cold.
"It ain't gonna be that cold," he protested, and speculated that the decision must have come to protect the tech billionaires who were invited to sit behind Trump on the dais for the ceremony. "Just because the oligarchs are there. They're too tender, coming from Silicon Valley. Are they too soft?"
He questioned whether Trump himself had approved the move until his producer read aloud a Truth Social post in which Trump said he did.
The moment was Steve Bannon in microcosm: He's a devoted Trump supporter who sometimes differs with him. He's also an advocate of political combat, who went to prison last year rather than cooperate with a Congressional investigation of Trump's bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat. (Bannon was released in October, but still faces a criminal case in New York State on charges that he profited from donations that were solicited to help Trump build a wall at the US-Mexico border.)
As Trump prepares to retake power, Bannon is celebrating, while also debating tech billionaires over the new administration's approach to immigration. Bannon says he is part of a populist revolution, while a glance at the inauguration might suggest the opposite is happening. Monday's attendees are expected to include three of the richest and most influential men in the world: Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk.
Bannon calls them "oligarchs" — the same word President Biden used in his farewell address last week — and his recent social media battle with Musk shows some of the differences in Trump's coalition. Bannon is seeking crackdowns on both illegal and legal immigration, as well as confrontation with China. Musk, the South African immigrant who does much business in China, would seem to personify the "globalists" that Trump's movement rails against, but also played a significant and costly role in Trump's victory.
We talked with Bannon after that morning's program ended. He was sitting in the seat from which he broadcasts, in front of a fireplace mantel decorated with a painting of Jesus Christ, a Moms for Liberty travel mug, and a sign with the saying, "There are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences." The quote is attributed to Stephen K. Bannon.
Bannon says he's not seeking a position in the second Trump administration as he did for the first. He nonetheless plans to exert influence through the live-streamed program that he produces 22 hours per week — four hours each weekday and an extra two on Saturday.
A continuing theme of the program is the 2020 election. Last week's guests included Mike Lindell, the pillow maker, who once again insisted, as he has for years, that he will prove his claims of a stolen election very soon. In his discussion with Bannon, it became clear that each man doubts the other's theory of how the election was stolen, yet both still insist it was.
There is also a strand of populist economics; Bannon says on the air that he wants to cut taxes for the working class, yet raise taxes on the wealthy. Trump and Republicans instituted tax cuts for the wealthy in his first term and he has proposed extending them in his second.
In our conversation, Bannon insisted the billionaires who contributed millions to the inauguration are not buying influence but being used as trophies by the new president. "They're not there because they support Trump. They're there because the Trump movement and President Trump broke them," Bannon said.
His difference with Musk centered on H-1B visas for high-skilled immigrant workers. Musk has lobbied Trump to support them, and in late December posted on X that he would "go to war" on the issue. Bannon, in turn, has called Musk "evil."
Bannon opposes the visas, asserting that they are unfair to U.S.-born workers. When Trump finally addressed the debate he said he supported the visas; but Bannon insists the fight isn't over.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Steve Inskeep: I've heard you talking about oligarchs, using the same word that President Biden used. You played the clip of Biden the other day on your podcast and you talked about oligarchs and named Zuckerberg and some others. Where does Elon Musk fit into that?
Steve Bannon: Well, there's two sets of oligarchs. There's what we call the lords of easy money on Wall Street. And then there's the oligarchs in the apartheid state of Silicon Valley. And they're clearly oligarchs. They have concentration of wealth and power. With President Trump, I think Musk has very little power. He has some influence. But has very little power.
First off, these oligarchs are completely created by the Democratic Party and the lords of easy money. Remember, for the last four years, they had no problem at all with the oligarchs until they flipped and surrendered after we won. Elon Musk came a little earlier because he saw the writing on the wall. He's a smart guy who could actually see the true polling and saw where this was going. So he's the first man out. But Zuckerberg came and surrendered afterwards. Bezos came and surrendered afterwards. Marc Andreessen came and surrendered afterwards. They saw the game was over.
Inskeep: I want to drill down on Musk specifically because you've spoken about him in a particular way. Why is he so dangerous if he's not that powerful? Not that influential? Not really in Trump's ear that much?
Bannon: I'm the one that said three very positive things about Elon Musk. Just for the record. Number one, he came in and backed our play in May and June of 2024.
Number two, I have been talking about deconstructing the administrative state for a decade. We've been trying to do it. Musk comes in with this Department of Government Efficiency concept, which is dovetailing right in with the Office of Management and Budget. If we have a shot to deconstruct the administrative state and just take down some of the regulatory apparatus, but cut the cost, it'll be his efforts.
And number three, we've been working in Europe for years and because there's so little money in European politics, there's not a centrist government, centrist right or centrist left government that will stand. He brings the two tactical nuclear weapons of modern politics. He brings unlimited cash, and he brings a social media platform that he can bind or loosen.
Inskeep: And yet you've been very critical of him in recent days. Why?
Bannon: It came up to a head about the H-1B visas. We're populist. We believe American citizens should come first in everything. And in the visa program, there is no legal immigration to this country.
Inskeep: There's no legal immigration?
Bannon: It's all gamed. It's all corrupt.
Why are we trying to be an imperial power? Why do they say we need the best and the brightest? Well, hold it. The best and brightest have got to come from American citizens. I don't want to sit here and take the world's best and most elite and biggest brains and put them in the United States. What's going to make their countries better? That's an imperialist attitude.
President Trump and I disagree on this. He adamantly disagrees with me on this. He said that, for the best graduates of college, he wants to staple a green card to their diploma. And do the same for the best people at community college. And we said on the show the next day, I said, "President, with all due respect, we love you. We are your guys. However, we have an alternative. We would like to staple an exit visa on the back of every graduate. You get a month and then you're gone."
Inskeep: What does it say that Trump listened to the people you consider to be oligarchs and not to you?
Bannon: Well, hang on a second. Why do you say he's listened?
Inskeep: He agreed with them and not with you.
Bannon: Let's see how that plays out.
Inskeep: This feels like way more than a disagreement about H-1B visas.
Bannon: No, it's a fundamental chasm. Here's what upset me and why I got engaged. [Musk] called the American citizens retards the R word. [Musk didn't use the word himself but promoted a post on X that used it]. He dissed the MAGA movement as being racist, which is the old trope that the left. He used all the left tropes to come after us.
These oligarchs in Silicon Valley, they have a very different view of how people should govern themselves. I call it techno-feudalism. They don't believe in the underlying tenets of self-governance.
So we will break all these guys eventually. They are broken right now.
Inskeep: Do you talk much to Trump these days?
Bannon: Enough. And he watches the show.
Inskeep: You suggest a scenario where Trump is effectively using these tech leaders. They're up on stage with him, as though they're totems of his triumph. Are you sure that he's not using you, though, that it might be the reverse, that they're going to get what they want out of this and you're not?
Bannon: This is all a process, right? This is a populist, nationalist revolution in this country. It's been building for a long time. It takes a real understanding of how the system is and what solutions are populist solutions to change it. So is President Trump using us? No, it's his movement, right? We wouldn't be a movement if President Trump hadn't come along.
Inskeep: What will you think and do a year or two from now if it turns out that the people you see as oligarchs, who will be on the platform, on the stage with the president, end up getting the lower taxes they want and many other things that they want?
Bannon: We are battle hardened. This movement is battle hardened because we were put up against the wall in 2021.
Inskeep: Do you think it's possible that that will happen, that Trump will end up siding with them? That Congress will end up siding with them?
We will win because we're relentless. We don't quit. Is every vote going to go away? No, it's not. But it's a process. And when people see that the use of their agency means something, that they're just not some nameless person in the crowd, but actually them being in the precinct strategy, being election integrity, doing a show, calling your congressman, being a collective force right through your individual agency…victory begets victory.
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