Steve Bannon’s won’t back down from his bitter feud with Elon Musk.
The former White House adviser and right-wing media personality argued that Musk only has his “own interest” in mind during a conversation about West Wing infighting with Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith at the World Economy Summit on Wednesday.
According to Mediaite, Bannon alluded to tension between Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent when asked who was responsible for putting President Donald Trump’s radical economic agenda into action.
Calling Bessent a “safe pair of hands” and “very sophisticated businessman,” the “War Room” rabble-rouser shed some light on the battle that ensued behind the scenes over Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary.
“The first big fight we’ve had with Elon was over Elon pushed Howard Lutnick, and Bannon and ‘War Room’ pushed Scott Bessent,” Bannon said of the clash, which saw one side pushing for the somewhat measured pro-tariff financier, Bessent while Musk backed his more bullish billionaire ally Lutnick.
“That got very nasty in Mar-a-Lago,” Bannon claimed. “They leaked all kind of stuff about Scott that was not true.”
But the longtime MAGA devotee told Smith that Bessent was always the best pick for “what President Trump’s trying to do on trade, on tariffs, on taxes, on national security.”
“You’re going to need a steady eddy, a rock, that the markets can sit there and go, ‘That guy’s telling me the truth,’” he reasoned.
Bannon maintained that Lutnick “would have been an unmitigated disaster” if tapped to lead the Department of Treasury. Lutnick would eventually land a role as the less influential Secretary of Commerce instead.
Calling Musk out by name, Bannon said that the Bessent-vs.-Lutnick schism was ultimately “about people putting their own interest first” instead of prioritizing “the nation’s interest.”
Bannon’s insight emerged around the same time Axios reported that a power struggle between Musk and Bessent over who should lead the IRS had erupted into a frenzied shouting match.
“It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” a witness to the April 17 verbal tussle told the news site.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt would later call the argument part of “a healthy debate process” between White House factions.