After word leaked out about a clash at the White House where members of President Trump’s cabinet challenged the authority of Elon Musk to reshape their departments, one of the president’s top allies, Stephen K. Bannon, quickly piled on.
Mr. Bannon, who has characterized Mr. Musk as an interloper, a “parasitic illegal immigrant” and a “truly evil person,” suggested the world’s richest man was weighing Mr. Trump down.
“I don’t want to say an anchor or lodestone,” Mr. Bannon said on Friday of Mr. Musk on his show “War Room,” which is watched closely by a number of Trump allies, as well as the president himself. “It’s not that yet, but it’s trending — that is starting to affect everybody.”
The longstanding animus between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Musk encapsulates a key tension at the heart of Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again movement. It pits those like Mr. Bannon, who want Mr. Trump to carry out a more fully populist agenda, against ultrawealthy interests, epitomized by Mr. Musk, who occupy key positions in the president’s orbit.
Mr. Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement, but Mr. Bannon’s vocal disdain for Mr. Musk has been noticed by the president. In mid-February, the president told Mr. Bannon that he wanted him to lay off the attacks on Mr. Musk and for the two men to sit down privately, according to two people familiar with the comments.
That meeting has not happened yet, and it is not clear when or if it will.
But Mr. Trump’s effort to mediate between the two men, which has not been previously reported, reflects the president’s awareness that Mr. Bannon has a powerful megaphone with key parts of the MAGA base.
