What’s another term for a guy worth half a trillion dollars? For Steve Bannon, it’s “parasitic illegal immigrant.” That’s what he called Elon Musk in a new rant as their feud escalates to new heights.

“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview with UnHerd’s James Billot. 

Mr. Bannon, who served as a top aide for President Trump in his first term and later did a four-month stint in prison for contempt of Congress, has been targeting Mr. Musk for months, ever since the billionaire entrepreneur took the spotlight as the president’s First Buddy and head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

The talk show host hammered Mr. Musk on DOGE, saying its budgetary cuts were minimal and its efforts so far are nothing more than “performative.”

“DOGE is sitting there with the budget, but where the f*** are the DOGE cuts? We are 30 days away from approving a budget for the entire year with $2 trillion already baked in, and not one penny of anything that DOGE found. It’s ludicrous,” he said.

While DOGE has been fiddling around with the United States Agency for International Development budget — which, at more than $40 billion is a tiny fraction of the overall $7.3 trillion federal 2025 budget — Mr. Bannon said DOGE needs to start looking at cuts in the Defense Department.

“I notice there is a hesitancy to cross the Potomac and go to the Pentagon,” Mr. Bannon said. “I would like to see $100 billion taken off the $900 billion budget right now, which is really a trillion.”

Mr. Musk rarely engages with Mr. Bannon, but he did earlier this month.  “Bannon is a great talker, but not a great doer. What did he get done this week? Nothing,” Mr. Musk wrote on X.

For his part, Mr. Trump seems to lean more toward Mr. Musk than Mr. Bannon. On the issue of H-1B visas, a vehicle used by large corporations to hire foreign laborers, Mr. Trump sided with Mr. Musk despite Mr. Bannon’s vehement opposition to the program. 

One person close to Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump told CNN that Mr. Bannon’s criticism is tactical. “Bannon knows what he’s doing. He’s brilliant at comms and as someone who worked with him, he’s trying to paint himself as if he is equal to Elon,” the person said. “That’s not the case, but he is gaining that type of attention from this.”

Another Trump adviser candidly told CNN: “Trump doesn’t give a sh*t what Bannon says on this.”

Mr. Bannon also used his four-hour daily show to warn Mr. Trump about taking a “meat axe” to Medicaid, which Mr. Musk is reportedly targeting. 

“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,” he said on his War Room podcast last week.