Donald Trump’s one-time White House strategist and right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon has warned the president and his “best buddy” Elon Musk to tread carefully with certain federal government cuts or risk infuriating their supporters.
He warned that many of Trump’s MAGA supporters rely heavily on Medicaid, a health subsidy for low-income Americans, and not to take a “meat axe” to the program. More than $600 billion dollars went into Medicaid last year.
Bannon nevertheless wants to cut the program to help whack away at the $1.8 trillion deficit the federal government is running, he emphasized.
“I think it’s generally confusion and mayhem on Capitol Hill [now]. But hey, maybe I’m wrong. ... maybe they’re making some progress on this,” he said on his War Room podcast Thursday.
He urged: “Get into Medicaid ... a lot of MAGAs on Medicaid. I’m telling you, if you don’t think so, you are dead wrong. Medicaid is going to be a complicated one. Just can’t take a meat axe to it, although I would love to.”
Bannon has attacked Musk in the past, accusing him of having ties to the Communist Party in China, where Musk has a Tesla factory in Shanghai.
Early last month Bannon also slammed Musk after the tech billionaire said the U.S. desperately needs “smarter” foreign tech workers employed in the country on special H-1B visas, even as he railed against other immigrant workers.
Bannon vowed to Musk that he and MAGA Americans are going to “rip your face off” unless he wises up and stops pushing visas for skilled foreign workers to take good-paying tech industry jobs away from Americans.
Bannon on Tuesday dodged a prison sentence as part of a plea deal when he admitted in a Manhattan criminal courtroom to bilking donors as part spurious multi-million-dollar campaign to build parts of Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall during his first administration.
