Steve Bannon ribbed Gavin Newsom Wednesday on his new podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” saying the California Governor loved tech “oligarchs” like Elon Musk until they started supporting President Donald Trump.
“You love all the oligarchs — and particularly Elon — until they flip,” Bannon said. “And remember, all the rest of these oligarchs were all progressive Democrats until … .”
Newsom – whose podcast is billed as a forum for widely divergent political viewpoints – jumped in right there, and said he would refer to the major tech execs as “libertarian.”
“And I know these guys intimately, known them for decades,” Newsom added.
Bannon added that Newsom, as the governor has overseen Silicon Valley as it has become an “apartheid state.”
The back-and-forth came during what was an overall friendly conversation between Bannon, the political advisor who helped steer President Trump into the White House in 2016, and Newsom on his recently-launched “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast. Bannon was the second conservative guest to appear on Newsom’s show, following conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s appearance on the first episode last week.
Bannon’s comment stood out, considering the uneasy Musk-Newsom relationship that has developed over the years.
Newsom has had some nice things to say about Musk and Tesla, like in February 2023, when he said it was a “point of pride” that the electric car company started in California. But he has also criticized Musk, like last year, after the Tesla chief said he was moving the company’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas. Afterwards, Newsom posted on X that Musk had “bent the knee” to the right and President Trump with the move. Musk went on to fund Trump and other Republicans with more than $250 million during the 2024 election.
And yet another twist in the Musk-Newsom relationship came last fall, when the governor sided with Musk in SpaceX’s lawsuit against a California state commission.
Bannon, meanwhile, has not been Musk’s biggest fan, either. He recently called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” and skewered the X owner for voicing his displeasure with the president’s artificial intelligence plans.
But on Newsom’s podcast, he was more charitable to Musk. In particular, Bannon approved of Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency aiming to cut $1 trillion from the federal bureaucracy.
“I have got a lot of problems with Elon, and you know that, Elon knows it. But what I do admire is that he is trying to get this situation [under control] — to get the waste, broad abuse out,” Bannon said. “I hope it gets to a trillion dollars. I’m his biggest supporter of that — I do not think we are going to get there.”
You can watch the full interview in the video above. You can listen to the “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast here.
