Donald Trump’s former senior advisor Steve Bannon has thrown another jab at Elon Musk, this time over the Republicans getting their “a***s kicked” in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The GOP megadonor poured more than $20 million into conservative candidate Brad Schimel’s campaign coffers, only for him to be thwarted by liberal Susan Crawford on April 1. This means the liberals retained ideological control of the state’s High Court with a 4-3 majority.
The race was considered the first big test of the Trump administration and was seen as a referendum on the president.
Speaking to conservative British news channel GB News a week after the election, Bannon candidly said: “People should know we got our a***s kicked. It was a big defeat.”
The former White House chief strategist decried Musk’s approach to campaigning, claiming that he should have put the party, not himself, in the spotlight after he forcefully inserted himself into the election.
“Elon did make a mistake and made himself too central into the campaign,” he said. “It can’t be about yourself. It has to be about the cause. It has to be about the movement.”
Aside from donating millions through his super political action committee America PAC, Musk traveled to Green Bay just two days before Election Day to perform his signature stunt: personally handing out $1 million checks to voters who signed his petition against “activist judges.”
Musk said at the time that he did it to get “attention” for Schimel’s campaign and that his giveaways would cost substantially less than a PR campaign.
According to a new poll of registered Wisconsin voters by the Washington Post, 65 percent of respondents disapproved of Musk’s choice to involve himself in the race.
Bannon argued that only the commander-in-chief can place himself at the center of a GOP campaign because “Trump embodies all of it, right?”
“All the rest of us are kind of servants to that, to the movement, and we have to make sure we’re putting the movement first,” he added.
Banon credited the Democrats, claiming they shifted the onus away from the Republican Party and Trump to make the embattled Tesla owner the star.
“Trump’s name was barely mentioned, Trump was barely mentioned,” he said.
Bannon also addressed campaign financing. According to the Brennan Center for Law, the Crawford-Schimel contest was the most expensive judiciary battle in history, with more than $100 million being pumped into it.
He claimed that Republicans may have “actually outspent” the Democrats in Wisconsin.
Schimel lost despite having a near-$8 million spending advantage, according to the Brennan Center.
After the defeat, Musk lamented the “corruption of the judiciary” rather than admit any blame for the conservative candidate’s loss.
Bannon previously pushed for a “MAGA civil war” against Musk. He has labeled the SpaceX founder a “parasitic illegal immigrant” and “truly evil,” all while vowing to rip his “face-off” and to kick him out of Trumpworld.
However, according to The New York Times, Trump contacted Bannon in mid-February and urged him to stop attacking Musk.
