Steve Bannon, who once battled Elon Musk in their own MAGA civil war, took a parting shot at the billionaire Wednesday as he raged against President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Bannon criticized Musk’s work in the Department of Government Efficiency, claiming it was inefficient at uncovering fraud that it said plagued the federal government.
Bannon, a MAGA stalwart who served as a White House adviser to Trump in his first term, challenged Musk to provide proof that he had accomplished anything at DOGE.
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“In Social Security and Medicaid, show me where the fraud is,” Bannon said on his WarRoom podcast. “Show me where the DOGE fraud is.”
He continued, “I haven’t seen any fraud in Social Security... or Medicaid, or the Defense Department. The Defense Department is a festering sore of waste, fraud, and abuse. Show me the money. Where is the beef? We are in a crisis.”
DOGE claimed that 40 percent of callers to the Social Security Administration were fraudsters—a lofty figure that even Vice President JD Vance parroted. In reality, a DOGE-ordered study discovered the actual figure was eighteen ten-thousandths, or .0018 percent, of all calls in a month-long period.
Tens of thousands of federal workers were fired as part of DOGE’s initiatives, and funding was cut for organizations like NPR, and government subscriptions were ended for services like Politico Pro. Bannon supported these cuts, but suggested that anyone could have spotted and made the changes, which saved the government next to nothing in the context of a multi-trillion-dollar federal budget.
Musk went nuclear Tuesday on supporters of Trump’s mega bill, solidifying his fall from being the president’s ultimate yes-man. He said the bill was “outrageous,” “pork-filled,” and a “disgusting abomination” that will “increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
The world’s richest man added that he wants to see every lawmaker who voted for the bill, which was all but two House Republicans, to be fired in next year’s midterm elections.
Musk, like some Senate budget hawks, claims the bill would increase the U.S. deficit and is thus irresponsible.
Bannon offered another suggestion to reduce the deficit: No tax cut for the ultra-wealthy, such as Musk, who Forbes says is worth $415 billion.
“If you want to stop the debt bomb, Elon, and the guys on Capitol Hill, you’re going to have to raise taxes,” he said. “The wealthy can’t get an extension of the tax cut. That’s got to go to the middle class and the working class. That has to be extended. It has to be made permanent at 40 percent of the top bracket.”
Bannon, 71, has been open about his distrust of Musk for months, dating back to the Trump transition period, when it became clear the tech CEO would have a pivotal role in MAGA 2.0. He slammed Musk as a “technofeudalist” who was prioritizing his own companies and personal vendettas over the Trump administration’s priorities.
A week before Trump’s inauguration, Bannon vowed to have Musk run out of Trump’s inner circle by day one.
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy,” Bannon said in January. “I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.”
Bannon continued to blast Musk on a nearly weekly basis, even as the White House firmly stood behind him and DOGE’s mission, despite its significant mistakes. This culminated with Musk making a return shot against Bannon in February.
“Bannon is a great talker, but not a great doer,” Musk posted to X. “What did he get done this week? Nothing.”
