Steve Bannon and Elon Musk clash over H-1B visas, highlighting the diverse and sometimes conflicting factions within Trump's Republican coalition as he enters his second term. While Trump enjoys strong public support, internal tensions threaten his ability to govern effectively.
Over the past decade, Steve Bannon , the veteran strategist and podcast host, has been a pugnacious ally of Donald Trump , revelling in the task of taking on what he views as the liberal elite. But in the run-up to Trump’s inauguration for a second term on Monday, Bannon has been picking fights much closer to home — including an extraordinary bust-up with Elon Musk , the billionaire investor who has become one of the president-elect’s closest confidants.
An argument over visas for skilled workers has morphed into a much broader attack on Musk and other wealthy, libertarian technology executives who have grown close to Trump, but who Bannon fears are not sufficiently committed to the populist “Make America Great Again” agenda. Musk has defended the so-called H-1B visas, which are used by lots of tech companies to bring in skilled workers, claiming: “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” Last week, Bannon, who is critical of the visa programme, went so far as to describe Musk as “a truly evil guy” and pledged to “take this guy down”. Speaking to the Financial Times before travelling to Washington for the inauguration, Bannon was more measured — but no less pointed in his critique. “These guys do not believe in the nation state, they believe in techno-feudalism,” he says. “That chasm is going to become a serious issue, between the populists and the ‘broligarchs’ going forward.” Every new administration has big personalities vying for the ear of the president — and whose clashes sometimes become public. But the Bannon-Musk dispute highlights a crucial and complicated reality for Trump as he begins his second term. While the incoming president enjoys stronger standing with the American public than at almost any time during his first term, he also has a much more diverse political coalition to satisfy. The Republican party may be united in its personal loyalty to Trump, but it is now made up of a number of factions that have very different world views and agendas. When Trump entered office in 2017 on the back of a narrow election victory — he lost the popular vote by nearly 3mn votes — he was the leader of a party that was more unified around key objectives, even if there were tensions over economic policy. His decisive victory in last year’s election was partly the result of support from pockets of American society that he had not captured before. This allowed him to win the popular vote and to secure Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. The result of this political success, however, is that his base now stretches from libertarian-leaning technology executives such as Musk to lapsed Democrats sceptical of vaccines and ultra-processed foods like Robert F Kennedy Jr. He also won votes from low-income urban African-American and Hispanic voters angry about inflation. In the background, the tensions between the business-friendly wing of the Republican party and the increasingly dominant populist faction, which were a feature of the first term, are now much sharper — as the fierce argument over H-1B visas has shown. These factional disputes are likely to play out in almost all of the issues that the new administration is promising to address. And given their slim majorities in Congress — in the House of Representatives, the Republicans can only afford to lose two or three votes to pass legislation — every proposal will be a political battle. “I’m not sure that he will actually be stronger institutionally once he’s in office,” says Lindsay Chervinsky, a political historian and executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. “There are so many issues that people are going to be fundamentally and intractably in disagreement on.” Even without these tensions, Trump’s in-tray would be formidable. As he is sworn in to be the 47th US president at the age of 78, Trump will have to deliver on lofty promises he made to quickly tame prices, end foreign conflicts ranging from Ukraine to the Middle East, and use mass deportations to eject millions of undocumented immigrants from the US. Trump is expected to unleash a torrent of executive orders on his first day in office to reverse some of Joe Biden’s policies and introduce some new measures on trade and the southern border. But internal frictions have started to bubble up as Trump prepares to make his first policy decisions — from how aggressively to pursue tariffs on both allies and adversaries to the details of his immigration crackdown, which spending programmes to slash, and the timing and details of the tax cuts he has pledged for both companies and individuals. After Trump floated the idea of a temporary reprieve from the US ban on TikTok that took effect on Sunday, national security hawks in the party objected. “Now that the law has taken effect, there’s no legal basis for an extension,” Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, wrote on
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