Steve Bannon says Trump ‘broke’ tech bros Musk and Zuckerberg - who don’t really believe in MAGA movement

Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Elon Musk (right) both attended Trump’s inauguration Monday. Trump’s former chief advisor, Steve Bannon has called them out for yielding to Trump as oppose to being genuine supporters of his second-term - (Getty)

Donald Trump’s former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has fired a fusillade of heavy blows at the Silicon Valley tech triad arguing that the Trump 2.0 era will “break all these guys eventually.”

Speaking about the three richest men in the world, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who all attended Trump’s inauguration, Bannon said an era of “techno-feudalism” had arisen but that the tech “oligarchs” would undoubtedly falter in the new Trump era.

“They're not there because they support Trump. They're there because the Trump movement and President Trump broke them,” Bannon said ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

Steve Bannon is often vocal on the Republican lawmakers and conservative media executives who he believes have pledged fake loyalty to Trump and his administration (ABC News)

Bannon in an NPR interview Friday said the tech CEOs fundamentally “don’t believe in the underlying tenets of self-governance,” and he doesn’t bank on the President actually listening and adhering to their ramblings.

The former political strategist served as an architect in the 2016 Trump administration, Time Magazine even called him “The Great Manipulator” in 2017, before he was sent to federal prison for a contempt conviction. Now, he continues to use his live-streamed program WarRoom, first launched in 2019, as a podium to commentate on American politics – specifically the reawakened era of Trump 2.0.

Musk, he stressed was the most precarious of the bunch – not one to be trusted – and even went so far as to call him a “truly evil person” earlier this month in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.

At that time, Bannon claimed he could rid the X head before Trump’s inauguration – a plan that inevitably failed. “I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he’s inaugurated,” Bannon told the newspaper.

Bannon specifically targeted Musk and said he and the other tech CEO’s ‘don’t believe in the underlying tenets of self-governance’ (AP)

“He won’t have a blue pass with full access to the White House. He’ll be like everyone else”, he added.

At the heart of the Bannon v. Musk battle, lie their differing stances on H-1B visas for high-skilled immigrant workers.

While Bannon opposes the visas on the premise of them being unfair to U.S.-born workers, Musk lobbied Trump to bolster them and even told Bannon he’d go to war on the issue in December 2024.

Musk used his background as a South African immigrant to justify his stance when he claimed: “The reason I’m in America [...] is because of H1B.”

While Bannon agrees that Musk can have a huge influence on the President, he does not have power, Bannon told NPR.

“First off, these oligarchs are completely created by the Democratic Party and the lords of easy money. Remember, for the last four years, they had no problem at all with the oligarchs until they flipped and surrendered after we won,” Bannon said.

Zuckerberg, like Musk, attended the Trump inauguration. Bannon said the Meta found followed Musk and they saw where polling was headed (REUTERS)

“Elon Musk came a little earlier because he saw the writing on the wall. He’s a smart guy who could actually see the true polling and saw where this was going. So he’s the first man out.

“But Zuckerberg came and surrendered afterward. [Amazon founder Jeff[ Bezos came and surrendered afterward. [Web pionee] Marc Andreessen came and surrendered afterward. They saw the game was over”, Bannon said.