Steve Bannon Slams 'Scam' H1B Visas as Loomer Urges GOP to ...

President-elect Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon devoted the latest episode of his War Room podcast alternating between praising and blasting billionaire Elon Musk.

Addressing Musk’s support of H1B visas, Bannon called them a “scam” and rebuked the idea that Americans can’t fill top tech roles because they are not “well-educated.”

“I always give full respect to Elon. Elon was absolutely central. Elon understood that this was about getting out low-propensity, low-information voters,” said Bannon. “He did write the check, and that gets him a seat at the table—I’ve said that from the beginning—although I fundamentally disagree with him on major issues."

Bannon called Musk a “toddler” after his nuclear response to a social media user critiquing H1B visas.

On his podcast, Bannon added, “Let me just restate something, as a fact. The H1B visa program is a total and complete scam from its top to the bottom,” he said.

Amid H1B criticism, Musk declared in a tweet, “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.”

On his show, Bannon demanded Musk show “proof” that the visas indeed were effective by giving him a list of his employees who used them.

Discussing the growing influence of “tech bros” and “oligarchs” on federal affairs, far-right figurehead Laura Loomer joined the conversation to urge the GOP to “protect” Trump from Musk and his DOGE co-head, Vivek Ramaswamy.

“At what point do we say, ‘Thank you so much for supporting President Trump and donating to his ground gains, but these conflicts are inappropriate and they’re going to cause potential conflicts for President Trump and his nominees in the administration,‘” said Loomer. “We need to have and honest conversation about this... We need to protect President Trump from these conflicts.”