National Harbor, Maryland. The great speaker on the first day of the Conservative Political Conference was supposed to be Steve Bannon.
President Donald Trump’s former advisor, who now organizes the popular “War Room” podcast is a man at home at the annual meeting of conservative activists. He has left year after year and, in 2024, his party was the hot ticket.
But on Thursday morning, CPAC presenter Mercedes Schlapp had a surprise for the crowd. There would be an even bigger speaker: the technological billionaire Elon Musk, who has been destroying the federal government in his powerful paper from the White House.
The appearance of Musk, the first at the conference, stressed his role in the new center of gravity in the conservative universe, despite skepticism and some fights of several conservative factions, including the populist corner occupied by Bannon and his allies.
Bannon, who spoke just after Musk, even joked for having the bad luck to draw the “card” to follow “the richest boy in the world.”
Musk’s comments were his first public event since he caused waves in a rally after Trump’s inauguration with a gesture that many compared to Nazi greeting.
Since then, Musk has been the most visible member of the president’s administration, entering federal agencies with his engineers, many of whom are young men without experience in the government, and executing mass dismissals.
At CPAC, Musk did a live interview with Newsmax presenter Rob Schmitt. He took the stage with a gold chain and reflected sunglasses, which he never removed while talking. Javier Milei, the president of the right of Argentina, presented him with a “chainsaw for the bureaucracy.”
“I have become a meme,” Musk said, opening what would become an interview to have a rambling, during which he said that Doge was “fighting the matrix” and advocated establishing a live tour of Fort Knox, the legendary deposit In Kentucky, so that Americans can see the country’s gold reserves.
While Musk was not the most electrifying speaker at the conference, CPAC attendees still recovered around them.
Throughout the day, Musk was a main theme of discussion and the main conservative figures, even those who had belittled him the previous day, made efforts to kiss their ring on stage.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, Florida Senator Rick Scott, Senator of Missouri, Eric Schmitt, and the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson de Louisiana, praised Musk for their work with the Government’s efficiency department, The newly created vehicle for Trump’s agenda.
Even Bannon put aside his meat with musk for the day. In his speech just after Musk’s comments, he praised the cuts of Doge and called him “Superman.” Bannon also seemed to show his own greeting that was similar to a musk used in January.
Subsequently, in an organized Bannon event in Washington, DC, in Butterworth’s, a Capitol Hill restaurant that has become the new meeting place for the multitude of magician and where the line extended through the block, continued talking in a more way Complementary about musk, calling him a “genius engineer” in an interview with NBC News.
“You saw it today. He really can’t speak, but, man, it’s ‘boom’. It’s engineering, mathematics, ”said Bannon.
It is a very different tone from what Bannon has taken publicly in the past on Musk. Bannon has built a reputation for the nationalist policy focused on US workers and for an anti-china crusade. He has criticized “technofaudalism”, fueling the fears that a dependence on technology platforms is making servants of people who have no choice but to rent digital space. And although he praised the federal campaign of cutting and burning of Musk and the expense to choose Trump, he faced the billionaire Titan and other technological figures, who has compared with oligarchs, for policies such as immigration.
In December, Musk fought with Maga’s figures, including Bannon, who criticized him and other technological leaders for his support for the H-1B Visa program, which offers temporary visas to highly qualified foreign workers. Trump finally spoke in support of the program.
In January, Bannon called Musk “a truly evil person” and promised that he would expel him from the Trump camp “for when he is inaugurated.”
On Tuesday, the British departure did not hear an interview with Bannon in which, according to the reports, he called Musk “an illegal parasitic immigrant” who “wants to impose his strange experiments and play as God without any respect for history, values or values The country’s traditions.
And he told NBC News on Thursday that Musk has “a great evil brain.”
Trump’s advisors recognize the public tension that has been presented between Musk and Bannon, but have largely minimized the dispute over low heat.
“It’s what it is,” said a Trump advisor. “We know that both are in the team in several ways, I do not think that the boss cares a lot, as long as they are helping our agenda.”
The person pointed out that Trump sometimes likes to see his political advisors Jockey for his position, something that has been well known to return to his first term in 2017.
“I don’t think I hate him,” said the person. “It is an honor to be in the team, sometimes sharp elbows are required.”
Nigel Farage, leader of the Great Britain’s right -wing reform party, who had recently been involved in a Musk dispute on the support of the technology’s magnate to an anti -immigrant activist, also made a point to praise multimillionaire technology on Thursday, calling him a “” hero of freedom of expression. “
CPAC attendees also generally seemed to go along with Musk’s new positioning in the Republican party, even as many had disagreements or reserves about him.
“I love Elon Musk,” said Carter Long, president of the Republicans of the University of Xavier in Ohio, “and now is the time we can have these interpret debates and discussions.”
Long said Musk and others made a “tremendous effort to win”, and now the Republicans can discover in which direction the game will go.
“If Musk can prove to succeed with Doge and with these expense cuts and really reduce the deficit without touching the rights, I think that would be one of the greatest victories that any political movement in the history of our country could claim,” he said. .
