WASHINGTON — It took a little longer than he may have liked, but Steve Bannon eventually triumphed over Elon Musk.

In a mid-January interview, the former chief strategist to Donald Trump pledged to get Musk, who he called an "evil guy," booted from the then-incoming president's inner circle within days. Six months later, Musk is out. And a feud between Trump and the world's richest man is under way.

Bannon has stoked the tension, which began when Musk, a former special government employee who led Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, called on senators to reject Trump's tax cut bill. The two have traded barbs ever since, with Musk suggesting that Trump be impeached and Trump lamenting to reporters on June 5 that he did not know if he and his former pal would be able to repair their relationship.

Bannon tightens the screws on Musk

In print, radio and podcast interviews, Bannon has piled on Musk. He called on Trump to end the SpaceX founder and Tesla co-founder's government contracts. He's also prodded Trump to investigate alleged drug use by the South African-born businessman, as well as his immigration status.

"He crossed the Rubicon. It's one thing to make comments about spending on the bill. There's another thing about what he did," Bannon said on NPR's "Morning Edition" program. "You can't come out and say kill the president's most important legislative occurrence of this first term."

Musk's claim that Trump is mentioned in undisclosed classified files related to the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Musk's affirmative response to a social media post pushing for Trump to be replaced by Vice President JD Vance were too far, Bannon said on NPR, a public broadcasting organization the White House is trying to defund.

"It has crossed the line," Bannon said of Musk. "There's no going back."

Bannon said in a June 6 podcast he does not consider Musk's ouster a personal victory. "I don't ever look at things like that at all. Right now, it's a national security issue," Bannon said on the UnHerd with Freddie Sayers podcast.

He went on to accuse Musk of abusing his position inside the government to try gain access to government secrets to boost his business. DOGE did not deliver on the $1 trillion in savings Musk promised, he said of the government spending-slashing effort.

"Where's the money? What was DOGE really doing?" Bannon asked. "We want to make sure DOGE and Elon Musk didn't take any of the data sets for his personal use for his artificial intelligence, which is driving all of his businesses."

A clash that was months in the making

Bannon's own distaste for Musk dates back to a dispute over temporary visas for highly skilled immigrant laborers.

Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump initially tapped to co-lead DOGE, pushed for an expansion of the program as way to attract global talent, irritating immigration hawks in the conservative movement.

"We’re not going to be some anarcho-libertarian (state) run by Big Tech oligarchs — that’s not going to happen," Bannon said on his War Room podcast in December.

Bannon told Politico in a June 5 interview that, after the split with Trump, the MAGA movement is now done with Musk.

“I think MAGA is now seeing exactly what he was," Bannon said. “I’m just saying, ‘Hey, told you — knew this was gonna happen, folks. Not a hard one.'”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Steve Bannon prods Trump to cut off Elon Musk: 'He crossed the Rubicon'

Reporting by Francesca Chambers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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