Replies

The entire article (via Google Translate) -

Courtesy of Google Translate, here is a VERY recent interview of Steve Bannon by one of Italy’s largest newspapers Corriere della Sera

Original article: www.corriere.it/esteri/25_gennaio_08/steve-bannon-elon-musk-intervista-aca1876b-4035-4ce3-b978-5e5f4b6d9xlk.shtml

Steve Bannon: «Elon Musk only wants money, I will do anything to keep him out of the White House»
by Viviana Mazza
8-11 minutes

Trump’s former strategist: «Workers will reject Elon Musk’s global techno-feudalism»

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK - «I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he takes office. He will not have a blue pass with full access to the White House. He will be like anyone else - Steve Bannon tells Corriere -. He is a truly evil person. Stopping him has become a personal issue for me. Before, since he put in so much money, I was ready to tolerate him. Not anymore».

The clash that broke out at Christmas between Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, the strategist of Trump’s victory in 2016, who remained loyal to him until he ended up in prison in violation of the House subpoena, and who became a megaphone for the Make America Great Again movement, is not abating.

At the heart of the dispute is immigration: the H1B visas for skilled and talented immigrants that Musk said he supported, only to then partially backtrack, saying they should be reformed (which is not enough according to Bannon). But there is also the role of the richest man in the world in the future administration.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times says that Trump “complains to people about how Musk is a little too present”. Trump seemed to agree with Musk, saying he supported H1B visas (even if he limited them in 2020), but a poll by his former spokesman Sean Spicer on X found that 67% of the Maga base is hostile to these visas.

“The problem is that the techno-feudalists are using them to their advantage and people are furious,” Bannon says. “76% of the engineers in Silicon Valley are not American. It’s a central part of taking back our economy. They are the best jobs, and blacks and Hispanics don’t have access to them”.

Bannon is silent on the SpaceX-Italy deal (”I don’t know the details”) but in this interview he says that “Musk’s only goal is to become a trillionaire.”

Against Musk you are aligned with Bernie Sanders who writes on X about H1B visas: “They replace well-paid American jobs with foreign indentured servants” and “billionaires make money.”

“Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk are all white South Africans… He should go back to South Africa. Why do we have white South Africans, the most racist people in the world, commenting on everything that happens in the United States? Sure, I love Bernie joining the H1B visa party now. We’ve been fighting this battle for 10 years and Bernie hasn’t said a word because of all the money the Democratic Party takes from techno-feudalists. We will expose the corruption of the American system, how money controls everything, and hopefully inspire Italy to wake up.”

Why wasn’t Musk at Giorgia Meloni’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago?

“There were two political leaders. And there was Trump’s national security team. Musk is not part of this government, he’s doing an efficiency report to help us build the administrative state, but it would have been inappropriate for him to be there. President Trump has a high opinion of Meloni and I’m sure she also spoke to him about the situation in Ukraine. I realize there’s the Iran issue, but Ukraine is one of the most pressing things. I think Trump respects Meloni’s understanding of the Ukraine situation. I’m sure Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Waltz and others in Trump’s national security apparatus thought it was inappropriate to have Musk anywhere near all of this.”

What do you think of Musk’s interventionism in European politics?

“He suffered a major defeat in America on H1B visas, he derided our movement as racist and retarded, and he lost. He has the maturity of a child. He tried to change the conversation, after losing credibility in the United States and the fact that, frankly, people around Trump are tired of him. We have seen his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the real issues and his support for himself. His only goal is to become a trillionaire. He will do anything to make sure that every company he owns is protected or has a better deal or makes more money. The aggregation of wealth and, through wealth, power: that is his goal. American workers will not tolerate it. I was a supporter of the $250 million check he wrote for Trump and I am a supporter of his involvement with far-right movements in Europe: I hope he writes checks and gives them a platform. What is not good is that he suddenly tries to apply his botched ideas that aim to implement techno-feudalism on a global scale”.

Have you talked to Musk about it?

“I kicked him out of the White House every day for 30 days straight in 2017, when he was trying to get subsidies paid by American workers, basically taxes on people who earn 35 thousand dollars a year, for rewriting Tesla’s software. I don’t need to talk to Elon Musk, I know what he’s after”.

Does it matter whether Meloni can come to the inauguration or not? Or whether Salvini comes?

“I don’t think it matters at all. I am the first global political figure who supported Meloni because I saw her potential. The best thing he can do is help Trump solve the Ukrainian situation as soon as possible. And he doesn’t have to come to the US to do that. I hope Meloni has really changed her mind about Ukraine and understood her mistakes. I don’t speak for Trump, I speak for the far right in the US and I say: please, help the president to end the war and go to the negotiating table. He can be a great intermediary and hopefully remedy his failures in the last couple of years”.

January 8, 2025 (modified January 8, 2025 | 08:37)