Dem
47
GOP
53
Elon Musk may soon have to deal with foreign enemies, but he's not there yet. However, he already has a serious domestic one: Steve Bannon. Bannon's most recent comment about the South African was: "Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, tradition or values." Bannon probably means it, too. After all, Musk is an immigrant and Bannon doesn't like immigrants. Musk did not enter the U.S. by wading across the Rio Grande. He was born to a wealthy family in South Africa and, at age 24, he went to Stanford on a student visa. However, he wasn't interested in studying and, together with his brother, soon started a software company, Zip2. Running a business was not allowed by his student visa. That is the illegal part. He later started an online bank but was ousted by the board. Musk also overstayed his visa, which is also illegal.
Bannon has a podcast, War Room, with millions of subscribers. One of Bannon's themes is raging against the "elites," and he's now featuring Musk as one of the biggest elites. Bannon has repeatedly said that there is an unbreachable chasm between all the tech billionaires who are suddenly buddy-buddy with Trump and the MAGA movement. Bannon is doing his best to drive a wedge between Trump and the billionaires. To the extent that many of the MAGA faithful come to see people like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as the enemy, that could change Trump's relationship with them. (V)