No ‘going back’ for Elon Musk after calling for Trump impeachment, says Steve Bannon

Elon Musk “crossed the Rubicon” when he echoed sentiments on his social media platform X, calling for President Trump to be impeached, says former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Trump and Musk have been locked in a very public fight this week after Musk has spent days bashing the “big, beautiful bill” — a multi-trillion dollar spending bill key to unlocking the president’s agenda currently in the Senate. In return, the president threatened to cut the federal government’s contracts with Musk’s companies, including SpaceX.

Bannon told Morning Edition that “there’s no going back” for Musk after his feud with the president. The right-wing populist podcaster was an early Trump backer. Bannon served as the 2016 Trump campaign’s CEO and then went on to become chief strategist and senior adviser to the president.

Bannon went to prison last year for refusing to testify in a congressional investigation of Trump. He also has pleaded guilty to crimes in New York state. In January, Bannon told NPR he believed Trump would listen to the MAGA populist movement that helped him secure two presidencies over the billionaires backing his inauguration – Musk among them.

NPR reached out to Musk for comment but has not yet received a response.

Bannon discussed the public feud between Trump and Musk with NPR’s Steve Inskeep.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Steve Inskeep: Do you believe it is good for Trump to have this very public breakup?

Steve Bannon: Whether it’s good or not, it’s a reality. The president’s done gone out of his way to make sure that Elon had every opportunity, all the support, admiration, resources. [Trump] took him and his son and some of his children into his family [for] Christmas, all that. Elon asked for an extension to stay and the president denied it. And I think that was the beginning of this friction. And as I’ve said before, since December, this was inevitable. And so I just think the president needs to deal with it as a national security issue now.

Inskeep: I think that that one thing you said there I had not specifically heard before. You believe that Elon Musk had asked for an extension of his time as a special government employee?

Bannon: Yeah, I think it’s Marc Caputo at Axios, said that Elon had asked for an extension or some sort of workaround to the limitation of his time. And it was denied. And the president said it was time to kind of move on. And also, remember, the president is sitting there saying, like, where’s the trillion dollars? You said you were going to get a trillion dollars of waste, fraud, abuse. And quite frankly, he hasn’t turned up any fraud. So there’s been a lot of tension. And Elon Musk, like the 11 year old child he is, didn’t take it very well.

Note: Axios reported on June 3 that Musk sought to remain working as a “special government employee” beyond his statutorily allowed 130-day contract but was denied. NPR has not independently confirmed this.

Inskeep: Is Trump really going to follow your advice to cancel his government contracts, his companies government contracts?

Bannon: Steve, look, I think that this is not personal now. I think we have as a country a national security issue here. We have an individual that The New York Times has said has a massive drug problem, and that has not been refuted. We have an individual that has a deep financial and business relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. And we know he’s asked for private briefings of top secret information. He’s also somehow involved in this invitation to President Xi Jinping to come to the inauguration. You have someone whose legal status is in question. You can’t deport people from all over the world because the Third World countries that came here at the invitation of the Biden regime and we’ve a white South African who may be here illegally were here. It’s just not right.

Note: Musk has held U.S. citizenship since 2002, according to PolitiFact. The Washington Post reported in October 2024 that Musk worked illegally in the U.S. in the late ’90s; Musk denied his work was unauthorized. The New York Times reported last month that Musk used ketamine, ecstasy, and psychedelic mushrooms during his campaigning for Trump last year. NPR has not independently confirmed the NYT’s reporting.

Inskeep: As dramatic as all of this seems right now, Bill Ackman, another billionaire in the trump coalition, said publicly they should make up. Elon seemed to agree with that. Politico is now reporting that there’s a call of some kind scheduled with the president. Is it possible this whole thing was all just a social media tempest and it’s going to blow over?

Bannon: He crossed the Rubicon. It’s one thing to make comments about spending on the bill. There’s another thing about what he did. You can’t sit there and first or try to destroy the bill. You can’t come out and say kill the present most important legislative occurrence of this first term, number one. Number two, he crossed the Rubicon by this outrageous comparison to the Epstein files about saying President Trump should be impeached, replaced by JD Vance. This is so outrageous. It has crossed the line. He’s crossed the Rubicon and there’s no going back.

Note: Trump is currently serving his second and final constitutionally allowed term as president. Trump told CNN Friday that he won’t speak to Musk “for a while.”

This digital story was edited by Treye Green. The radio version was edited by Reena Advani and produced by Barry Gordemer, Julie Depenbrock and Nia Dumas.