Former White House aide Steve Bannon is proposing a dramatic escalation in the intra-MAGA feud that burst into public view on Thursday. Bannon, still a close ally and informal adviser to President Donald Trump, called on the president to kick his adviser-turned-rival Elon Musk out of the country.
“They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Bannon told the New York Times on Thursday. Bannon also told the Times that the Trump administration should suspend Musk’s security clearance, pending an investigation into the Tesla CEO’s alleged heavy drug use and his reported effort to obtain a classified China briefing from the Pentagon.
Speaking on his War Room podcast on Thursday, Bannon elaborated that Trump had to “get ahead” of Musk, because otherwise the billionaire would work with Democrats to impeach the president, “steal” the 2028 election from him and put him in prison. Bannon has often made the case that Trump should and will run for an unconstitutional third term in office.
“As sure as the turning of the Earth, if those progressives rub up on him and say, ‘Hey, they’re never going to buy the Teslas’ – they rub up on him, he’ll write a $500 million check for Hakeem Jeffries,” Bannon said on War Room.
Bannon also suggested that the federal government should temporarily seize Musk’s businesses.
Bannon has long-running animosity toward Musk. In a February interview, he called the South African tech mogul a “parasitic illegal immigrant.”
Watch Bannon’s remarks here:
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