‘We’re going to rip your face off’ in visa fight, Steve Bannon warns Elon Musk
Wednesday 01 January 2025 11:12 GMT
Donald Trump’s one-time White House strategist Steve Bannon warned Elon Musk Tuesday that he and other MAGA diehards are going to “rip your face off” unless Musk smartens up and stops pushing visas for skilled foreign workers to take good-paying tech industry jobs away from Americans.
He instructed Musk to “sit back and study” to understand MAGA’s - and what supporters believed was Trump’s - America First stance to keep U.S. jobs for Americans.
“They’re recent converts,” Bannon said Tuesday on his War Room podcast, referring to Musk and other tech-world Trump supporters.
“We love converts,” Bannon noted. “But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith and you understand the nuances of the faith and understand how you can internalize the faith.”
Don’t “come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be,” Bannon added. “If you’re going to do that, we’re going to rip your face off.”
Bannon called for a “100% moratorium on all immigration until we get this thing sorted.”
Bannon the previous day demanded “reparations” from Musk and other tech leaders for cutting Americans out of jobs. The visa issue is “central to the way they gutted the middle class in this country,” he complained.