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WASHINGTON — Elon Musk lashed out at Trump ally Steve Bannon Friday, calling the former White House chief strategist “a criminal” after Bannon urged the president to seize Musk’s SpaceX company and to deport the South African-born billionaire.
Replying to an X post rehashing Bannon’s call for Trump to use the Defense Production Act to take over Musk’s space exploration company, the Tesla CEO posted that “Bannon advocates crime, because he is a criminal.”
Musk, 53, became a naturalized American citizen in 2002.
Bannon, 71, served four months in federal prison after being convicted in July 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to give documents and testimony to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He was released in October of last year.
Here is the latest on Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s feud
Trump, 78, also granted Bannon a pardon during the final moments of his first term in office, getting him off the hook for federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering after allegedly defrauding donors to a fund advertised as helping construct a wall along the US-Mexico border.
Musk’s broadside at Bannon came amid a still-simmering feud with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, during which the Tesla boss threatened Thursday to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft — used by NASA to take astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station — before later backing off.
The Dragon made headlines in March after it was used to fetch astronauts Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams and Butch Wilmore, who had been stuck in space for nine months before being returned safely to Earth.
The Defense Production Act would allow the federal government to take over private assets such as SpaceX; however, the company would have to be deemed critical to national security.
The DPA was last used by Trump in March to bolster the US production of critical minerals to push back on China’s monopoly on the industry.
It was also used by both Trump and former President Joe Biden to increase production of medical supplies and vaccines, respectively, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
