Steve Bannon gets 'brutally frank' about the reason Trump won

Billionaire Elon Musk — CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) — was a generous donor to President-elect Donald Trump's 2024 campaign. And Trump is thanking him by offering a position in a proposed new federal government agency: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk would head along with MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Steve Bannon, far-right MAGA Republican and host of the "War Room" podcast, is arguing that Musk played a crucial role in Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to the Cook Political Report, Trump picked up 312 electoral votes (compared to 226 for Harris) and won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 or 1.6 percent.

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In an interview with Puck's Peter Hamby, Bannon said, "(Elon Musk) came in with the money and the professionals. To be brutally frank, it’s the reason we won."

On X, Puck described Bannon as "the Rasputin of the MAGA movement."

In Hamby's Bannon interview, published on November 26, the journalist explains, "It's been a frenetic four weeks for Steve Bannon. At the tail end of October, just before the election, the pied piper of the MAGA movement was released from federal prison in Connecticut in the middle of the night, 20 pounds lighter after serving a four-month sentence for refusing to cooperative with a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot.

Hamby adds, "Bannon couldn't follow much election news in prison, but once out, he picked up his populist crusade right where he left off."

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Read Puck's full interview with Steve Bannon at this link (subscription required).