The shadow president paced across the stage after his speech, sun shades on, mouth frozen in a smile, elevating a chainsaw overhead to the delight of an adoring crowd as a big rectangular canvas made its means from the again of the viewers towards him. He grabbed the portray, visibly thrilled. On the canvas, as onstage, he was the point of interest. Beams of sunshine emanated from his head, which the artist had superimposed over scenes from the world his real-world counterpart had promised to construct: an astronaut surveying a barren pink planet, a futuristic civilization full with flying vehicles. Within the portray, he wore a go well with and tie. His real-world apparel was extra informal: a black blazer over a novelty T-shirt that learn “I’m not procrastinating, I’m doing aspect quests,” a gold chain, his signature “darkish MAGA” hat, and the aforementioned sun shades. Within the portray, he was triumphant. Onstage on the Conservative Political Motion Convention (CPAC), nevertheless, Elon Musk had appeared incoherent. Fifteen or so minutes into the interview, a reporter within the media pit turned to me and mimed smoking a joint, mouthing, “Is he excessive?”
Nonetheless, the viewers was in his thrall. At one level, when all Musk might handle to say was “Yeah, um. So. I imply, actually,” somebody within the crowd shouted, “We love you!” They gave him a standing ovation earlier than he spoke and one other after.
CPAC, because it’s marketed, is an annual present of right-wing unity, an event that brings collectively elected officers and lobbyists, influencers and their legions of adoring followers, all underneath the mantle of a harmonious conservative motion. It is sensible, then, that Musk can be welcomed into the ever-expanding MAGA coalition, particularly as CPAC’s attendance dwindles. However this yr, a giant convention and lineup of afterparties couldn’t conceal the interior conflicts of the motion: a tech oligarch on the helm of a “populist revolution,” a person who has all however deserted most of his kids, being praised throughout a panel on CPAC’s staunch “pro-family” stance; the insular America-first rhetoric and the rising presence of an “worldwide CPAC motion” that pads out the thinning crowds. That is, in some methods, the logical conclusion of the motion that started in Trump Tower a decade in the past, when the longer term president descended a gilded escalator in his namesake constructing and vowed to struggle for the frequent man. President Donald Trump’s supporters have lengthy been keen to look previous contradictions and dissonance — however some diehards are starting to really feel the pressure.
Hours earlier than Musk’s non-speech, I had interviewed the artist who painted the portrait of Musk, a person named Seth Leibowitz. “It wants an replace. It’s been sitting in a field for a pair years,” Leibowitz mentioned of the portray, which he had accomplished in 2019. “He’s extra related now, however truly, I’m afraid of him being a wolf in sheep’s clothes.”
In what would turn into a working theme of the weekend, Leibowitz expressed each his fears of Musk’s transhumanism — using expertise to reinforce human talents — in addition to assist for the tech mogul’s present function in Washington. Musk’s short-term plans to dismantle the federal forms, embodied within the Division of Authorities Effectivity, or DOGE, are consistent with long-standing conservative targets. However Musk’s long-term designs to create a brood of super-babies and add his consciousness into the cloud don’t precisely sit properly with the spiritual proper.
Leibowitz talked about Neuralink, then informed me a couple of Spanish professor from the Fifties who as soon as stopped a bull from charging him by neuralizing its mind. “They’ve nanobiosensors in our our bodies proper now,” Leibowitz informed me. “They don’t must put a chip in your mind to observe our mind exercise.” Regardless of his fears, Leibowitz had excessive hopes for DOGE — “We want extra transparency,” he mentioned — although he remained cautious of Musk’s broader political aspirations. “I’m hoping that Elon doesn’t assume he can wiggle his means in and sometime be the following president of the world.”
My encounter with Leibowitz was little greater than an accident. I bumped into him within the foyer of the Gaylord Nationwide Resort and Conference Heart, the annual dwelling of CPAC, whereas looking for a short second of respite from the day’s festivities within the type of barbecue with some younger members of the Log Cabin Republicans. (On my means out the sliding glass doorways, I walked previous Laura Loomer, the right-wing provocateur who has turn into an in depth ally of Trump.) Over Bloody Marys, I informed the small group about my encounter with the Musk-skeptical artist who had nonetheless painted his portrait, a picture that embodied the contradictions of the burgeoning tech-right alliance.
“These should not good folks. They’re bizarre,” Logan Sajdowitz, a 22-year-old from Wisconsin, mentioned of Silicon Valley’s newly conservative billionaires. “And I’m not an enormous fan of the trad-cons, however not less than they’ve a coherent ideology. The tech proper is simply fucking… I don’t know.” Sajdowitz admitted his place is uncommon for this crowd. “I needs to be at Rules First proper now,” he continued, referring to the staid “Never Trump” conference going down throughout the river the identical weekend.
As Sajdowitz and I mentioned whether or not Musk’s DOGE was hurtling towards a full-blown constitutional disaster, a pair of British males on the opposite aspect of the desk silently handed a banana-flavored vape forwards and backwards. Earlier than I left, one in every of them confirmed me a video of him and Liz Truss, the short-lived prime minister of the UK who has turn into a CPAC fixture, dancing collectively at a homosexual bar. That they had missed Truss’ speech, however all of us agreed we’d tune in for Musk’s, which had been introduced earlier that day by Mercedes Schlapp, spouse of the embattled CPAC chair, Matt Schlapp.
“We’ve a really particular visitor who’s going to be right here throughout the convention,” Mercedes mentioned that morning, minutes earlier than Vice President JD Vance was speculated to take the stage. “Sort of like, a tech titan, perhaps…” — unusual, I assumed, not the primary phrases I’d use to explain Vance, although he does come from a enterprise capital background — “…chargeable for DOGE,” she teased. “Elon Musk will likely be right here on the CPAC stage!”
However first, it was Vance’s flip. The gang erupted in a “USA! USA!” chant earlier than he had an opportunity to talk. His dialog with the woman Schlapp largely centered on immigration and the border, which he described because the supply of all our social ills, together with authorities overspending. Kicking off what would turn into a well-liked chorus over the course of the weekend, Vance praised Musk’s cost-cutting efforts at DOGE. “Why are we spending cash on progressive trendy artwork initiatives centered round bogs in Afghanistan?” Vance requested the incredulous viewers. (Different audio system used the identical Mad Libs-esque development: [woke] [project] in [foreign country]. For Megyn Kelly, who devoted a good portion of her 20-minute speech to discussing Blake Vigorous and Justin Baldoni, it was trans operas in Colombia; Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) chastised the federal government for sending “tens of millions of {dollars} to Guatemala for intercourse modifications.” Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi stored it imprecise, alleging that USAID cash was “doubtless going to terrorist organizations.”) “Let’s flip off the spigot and spend the American folks’s tax cash on the American folks’s priorities,” Vance declared, to thunderous applause.
The room emptied out after Vance spoke. The CPAC crowd, it appeared, wasn’t keen on listening to Bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor clarify why cryptocurrency is “inherently conservative.” Trump had headlined the Bitcoin Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, seven months earlier, drawing MAGA diehards to what was as soon as an trade occasion, however the inverse didn’t seem like occurring. Exterior the principle stage, on “media row,” folks lined as much as get their footage taken with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, whereas the Open Supply AI Basis’s desk failed to draw a lot curiosity. Ultimately I, too, obtained bored of Saylor’s speech and went downstairs to seize a muffin. In line on the cafe, I overheard a just lately liberated January sixth prisoner I’d met the night time earlier than declare somebody had stabbed him whereas he was locked up. I additionally bumped into Joe Allen, the tech correspondent for Steve Bannon’s Conflict Room, who provided to introduce me to the large man himself.
Allen, a tech skeptic who had beforehand informed me that Musk and Peter Thiel “characterize an ideology that’s basically hostile to human life,” walked me over to the set the place Bannon was recording his present, nevertheless it was clear I wouldn’t be getting an interview anytime quickly. Bannon obtained mobbed by supporters who began singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” as quickly because the cameras stopped rolling.
On my means again to the principle stage, I ran right into a former groyper I’d met eventually yr’s CPAC who informed me he had gotten roped into gathering signatures for a petition calling for Trump to run for a 3rd time period. (In line with a press launch issued by the Third Time period Venture, “prolonged management will be essential throughout occasions of nationwide disaster and financial growth.”) I obtained again to my seat as Truss mentioned the UK wants “Elon and his nerd military of Muskrats” to take a tough take a look at the “British deep state.” Overseas dignitaries, too, have been there to pay fealty to each the de facto and the de jure presidents. Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the previous Brazilian president, informed the viewers {that a} Brazilian federal court docket’s “unlawful pretend information investigation” into Musk that led to X being quickly banned within the nation ought to make us all, “I don’t know, perhaps scared.”
Just a few hours after the youthful Bolsonaro urged CPAC attendees to defend free speech at dwelling and overseas, Schmitt, the Missouri senator, informed Mike Davis — the president of the Article III Venture who was in the running to be Trump’s attorney general — that 60 Minutes, the CBS show, “should get sued for what they did to President Trump within the interview.” Brendan Carr, the newly appointed chair of the Federal Communications Fee, was supposed to hitch Schmitt and Davis to debate “The Takedown of Left Tech,” based on the CPAC agenda, however was inexplicably lacking. There was a lot to speak about with out him, together with potential antitrust challenges to huge tech firms like Fb and Google, and Musk’s work at DOGE. “The Democrats are dropping their minds due to DOGE and these efforts to strip away their energy,” Schmitt mentioned. “And they need to! As a result of the folks of this nation elected one particular person to run the chief department, and he will get to make choices on personnel and coverage.”
For a second, it was unclear if he was referring to Trump or Musk.
When Trump first took workplace eight years in the past, Musk was nowhere in sight. The liberal bogeyman of that period — for a short time, not less than — was Steve Bannon, the chief chair of the far-right Breitbart Information. The populist standard-bearer served as Trump’s chief strategist throughout these first eight months of 2017, and he continues to wield energy within the prolonged MAGA universe, regardless of not being a part of Trump’s inside circle. (As a part of their falling-out, Bannon acquired the Trumpian appellation “Sloppy Steve” in 2018.) Bannon now hosts Steve Bannon’s Conflict Room, a every day present distributed through the right-wing cable channel Actual America’s Voice.
On this second Trump administration, Bannon, somewhat than being the epicenter of energy, is as an alternative riling up Trump’s base from the sidelines and channeling his everyman ire towards Trump’s new allies, the Silicon Valley elites — the “oligarchs,” as Bannon calls them — who, he claims, are attempting to purchase Trump’s favor with cash. This cronyism sits ailing with him; it’s at odds with the important ideology that Bannon espouses. Bannon is anti-immigration, authorized or in any other case; he helps trust-busting and opposes the neoliberal order. His worldview, in different phrases, can’t be reconciled with that of even essentially the most right-wing Silicon Valley enterprise capitalist or CEO — he’s at odds, even, with Musk, Trump’s new right-hand man. Certainly, lower than per week previous to CPAC, Bannon referred to as the Tesla CEO a “parasitic unlawful immigrant.” I needed to grasp what Bannon product of Trump’s newfound assist among the many Silicon Valley elite, whether or not tech moguls are utilizing Trump for his energy or he’s utilizing them for his or her cash, or all the above. Greater than something, I needed to know what the MAGA base, the white-haired boomers in sequined jackets and Faculty Republicans in rumpled fits, product of the obvious rift between two of Trump’s most outspoken supporters.
The plenty, it appears, don’t see the facility wrestle occurring, and those that do don’t actually assume it issues. A lot of the CPAC attendees I spoke to noticed Elon not as a usurper of presidential energy however an enforcer of it. The sentiment, expressed time and time once more, was that Musk works for Trump and Trump works for us, the American folks. DOGE, they informed me, is about eliminating waste and fraud within the authorities — it’s about making certain that People’ tax {dollars} are spent at dwelling, not on queer puppet exhibits in Iraq.
Even Bannon, clearly understanding his viewers, praised DOGE in his personal CPAC speech, which got here instantly after the chainsaw incident. “How did I draw the cardboard to observe Elon Musk?” Bannon quipped. “You deliver out the world’s richest man, Superman, and I’m speculated to observe it? Come on, man!” The viewers was simply as enraptured by Bannon as they’d been by Musk, however the press part had already emptied out.
Now that Trump was in workplace, Bannon mentioned, “Day by day is Christmas day.” Musk, he claimed, had uncovered greater than $55 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse, and it was all being finished within the identify of the folks on this room, “one of the best of the American folks.” However they might not turn into complacent, not even in victory. They wanted to defend their good points. “Are you ready to struggle for Trump?” Bannon requested the viewers. “Are you ready to struggle for this republic? Are you ready to struggle for this nation?” They responded by chanting the phrases Trump yelled after practically being assassinated in Pennsylvania: struggle, struggle, struggle.
Earlier than strolling offstage, Bannon raised his proper arm, ramrod straight, into the air, a movement that the common particular person in 2025 would determine as a Nazi salute. As with Musk’s so-called “Roman salute” in January, the gesticulation instantly kicked off the back-and-forth volley over what to name it. Bannon denied any untoward habits. “I try this on a regular basis,” Bannon informed NBC Information. “I wave to my crowd, as a result of it’s all about them.” But it surely was all an excessive amount of even for a French far-right politician, who canceled his CPAC speech in protest of the “gesture alluding to Nazi ideology.”
The new ticket Thursday night time was Bannon’s get together at Butterworth’s, a French bistro in Capitol Hill that has become a MAGAworld hub since opening final October. On the lodge bar after Bannon’s speech, I encountered the zoomer Nazis I’d met on the convention last year, consuming white Russians out of disposable water bottles and scrolling by Instagram. The older members of the group had labored the door at Bannon’s CPAC 2024 afterparty. This yr, they weren’t on the checklist. As I waited for my Uber, I heard a lady complain that she hadn’t been invited; a buddy informed her to not fear, she’d be high quality. The road to get into the get together was spilling out the door and across the block after I pulled as much as Butterworth’s round 7:30, simply half-hour after the festivities had begun. Raheem Kassam, an investor within the restaurant and the previous editor-in-chief of Breitbart Information UK, distributed hand heaters to the shivering plenty and tried to cease folks from sneaking in by the aspect door.
Inside, the restaurant was so packed I had a tough time transferring by the group. The open bar had folks appearing out: a lady seized a microphone and began an impromptu karaoke session to the chagrin of the opposite partygoers; I noticed a younger man sitting in a nook sales space, a blonde lady perched on his lap. Once they obtained up, her lipstick was smeared. It wasn’t even 9PM. Bannon’s remarks that night time have been transient. After he spoke, he ceded the stage to Girl Nogrady, a right-wing singer-slash-microinfluencer, who carried out her track “Trendy Day Holy Conflict.” The person standing subsequent to me screamed alongside to each phrase.
Overwhelmed by the sheer density of the group, I went outdoors for some contemporary air. Two nuns adopted shortly thereafter, squeezing previous the throng of our bodies within the restaurant. Certainly one of them mentioned she was from “Commiefornia.”
The conference heart was quiet the following morning; most individuals, I assumed, have been sleeping off their hangovers. However the crowds barely grew because the day progressed. Reporters who had been overlaying CPAC for the reason that Obama administration informed me this was the smallest gathering they’d ever seen. The low turnout could have been as a result of day’s agenda: Friday’s lineup featured programming from CPAC Japan, CPAC Australia, CPAC Korea, CPAC Hungary, and CPAC Israel; panels on the Iranian nuclear risk and alleged election fraud in South Korea; and speeches by a Mexican actor and the prime minister of Slovakia.
Whereas these worldwide leaders addressed small audiences, the American plenty gathered within the hallway, desirous to catch a glimpse of their favourite MAGAworld figures. CPAC, I noticed, is type of like a right-wing Disneyland, besides as an alternative of being photographed with Mickey Mouse, folks have been lining as much as take selfies with the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, or with Steven Sund, the chief of the Capitol Police throughout the January sixth revolt who was signing copies of his e book, Braveness Beneath Hearth: Beneath Siege and Outnumbered 58 to 1 on January 6, on the Smith & Wesson sales space.
I used to be confused as to why Sund, whose e book guarantees to inform “the complete fact about what occurred on January sixth,” can be welcome on the identical convention that had held a vigil for the J6ers a yr prior and ostensibly welcomed the liberated prisoners at this yr’s occasion. CPAC had kicked out some J6ers on Friday for causes that stay unclear; rumor was that, after being ousted, a few of them went to the bar throughout the road from the conference heart, the place they spent the afternoon using a mechanical bull. In any case, they have been reinstated earlier than the weekend’s finish. On Saturday, I bumped into Brandon Fellows, a J6er who was strolling across the conference heart in a pretend Immigration and Customs Enforcement jacket, who informed me he purchased it on Amazon for $29.99 and used it to “scare illegals.”
Sund, it appeared, was a repentant cop: on Friday, he spoke on a panel in regards to the “J6 Sham.” Whereas Sund signed his books for MAGAworld, his former colleague, Michael Fanone — maybe finest recognized for testifying within the Home’s January sixth investigation — made his personal look on the Rules First summit throughout the river. There, Fanone was accosted by J6er and former Proud Boy chief Enrique Tarrio within the halls of the venue. The convention for By no means Trump conservatives was evacuated Sunday after the lodge internet hosting it acquired a bomb risk from somebody claiming to be Tarrio, who mentioned 4 pipe bombs would detonate “as quickly as the following door opens” in honor of “the J6 hostages just lately launched by Emperor Trump.”
Friday night time, whereas the grown-ups attended the Ronald Reagan Dinner, the DC Younger Republicans hosted a mixer within the lodge foyer bar. A lone man danced to “YMCA,” a MAGAworld favourite, as the opposite members of his desk seemed on. I made a decision to go to mattress early in preparation for Trump’s “shock” speech the following day. The president’s look hadn’t been introduced, however the Secret Service presence had been, which was all the data anybody wanted. The subsequent morning, on the opposite aspect of the safety line, I bumped into James O’Keefe’s assistant, who informed me he’d stayed out till 4AM partying with the CPAC Australia crew. He requested if I’d seen the fellows who have been handing out flyers for a celebration purportedly being hosted by Bannon and O’Keefe, the Venture Veritas founder whose undercover activists covertly movie members of the so-called “deep state.”
The assistant informed me he had confronted the hucksters, who have been charging an $80 cowl for his or her get together at Tom’s Watch Bar. O’Keefe, he informed me — not for the primary time that weekend — can be DJing the invite-only DOGE appreciation get together, and the checklist can be tight. As we spoke, he identified the window, gesturing towards what gave the impression to be Trump’s motorcade because it sped down the parkway and towards us.
Saturday’s lineup was stacked, every speaker seemingly chosen to drum up pleasure for the forty seventh president. Javier Milei, the austerity-loving president of Argentina who’d handed Musk the chainsaw two days earlier, returned for an encore. The gang responded enthusiastically, deterred neither by the cryptocurrency “rug pull” scandal Milei is going through again dwelling nor by the truth that his speech was completely in Spanish. (Fortuitously, there have been subtitles.) Stephen Miller, the White Home adviser who had been the brains behind lots of Trump’s first-term immigration insurance policies, vowed to get “illegals” overseas and DEI out of our faculties. Border czar Tom Homan discovered himself swarmed by supporters within the hallway, one in every of whom chanted “households will be deported collectively” as passersby lined as much as have their image taken with the person orchestrating Trump’s mass deportations. As I seemed for an exit, I used to be intercepted by a person who requested if this was my first CPAC and boasted in regards to the VIP tickets he’d snagged for final yr’s Turning Level USA convention, the annual younger conservative gathering hosted by Charlie Kirk, earlier than asking if I used to be aware of Elon’s work at DOGE.
“The capability for cognitive dissonance and to be snug with it’s seemingly limitless.”
Downstairs, Joe Allen, the Conflict Room tech correspondent, informed me this can be my final likelihood to interview Bannon. As we waited for Conflict Room to complete filming, Allen and I returned to our dialogue of whether or not Bannon-style populism was incompatible with Musk and the remainder of the tech-right.
The CPAC attendees I had interviewed actually didn’t assume so. Oscar Flores, a Republican candidate for an area election in his native San Francisco, informed me it was like two guys who “will get in a bar struggle, and shortly thereafter, they’ll begin sharing beers and it’s all high quality and dandy.” His buddy, an actual property agent who declined to be named, mentioned Musk would finally “bend the knee.” A girl in an outsized Trump masks, who I had noticed all weekend roaming across the conference heart with two equally masked buddies, informed me she was a fan of Bannon and Musk alike. “It’s like the rest, you don’t agree with each single factor about one other particular person,” she informed me after I requested for her ideas on Bannon’s criticisms of Musk.
Allen was much less sanguine. “The capability for cognitive dissonance and to be snug with it’s seemingly limitless,” he informed me as we waited for Bannon. “What is admittedly placing about Musk and lots of within the Republican management is how nakedly lots of them exhibit their elevation — or their aloofness — from the nice and evil of the plenty. It’s unsettling, as a result of there’s not likely been a lot of a revolt towards it.” Even some on the Bannonite “populist nationalist” proper, he mentioned, are disquieted by Musk’s habits and beliefs however “settle for it as a politically expedient benefit for now, I suppose underneath the belief that it may be reversed, or that Musk will be saved, or that the designs of Musk and the opposite accelerationists which might be making use of a lot stress and affect on the Trump administration will be prevented down the street.”
However Allen himself wasn’t so positive. “It’s going to be a dry desert on the opposite aspect of that mirage,” he mentioned, earlier than strolling me over to the Conflict Room stage. After we arrived, Bannon was as soon as once more surrounded by followers who had lined as much as obtain his blessing. After listening to I had questions for him in regards to the tech-MAGA coalition, Bannon promised to talk to me as quickly because the meet and greet was over. Whereas we waited, Allen and I ambled over to a carnival sport sponsored by Actual America’s Voice, the place he handed me a toy bow and arrow and informed me to provide it a strive. I did not hit the ball floating in entrance of “eternally wars.” After a couple of false begins, he hit “DEI” and “unlawful immigration” in a single shot.
My interview with Bannon started earlier than I knew it, with Bannon telling me, “Your thesis is flawed,” though I hadn’t but requested a single query. (He had clearly taken situation with my point out of the “tech-MAGA coalition.”)
“This can be a populist nationalist motion. If you get the tech boys in — and that is my basic disagreement with them — they’re not populist they usually’re not nationalist.” Particular person tech bros, he continued, might hop on the Trump prepare in the event that they actually believed in it, “however the enterprise is a globalist enterprise. They consider it globally,” he informed me. (In Bannonworld, globalism just isn’t a very good factor.) Bannon mentioned he understood the necessity to construct a “huge coalition” and referred to as himself a frontrunner within the effort to deliver Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s supporters into MAGA’s increasing tent.
Bannon steered that the tech titans who threw their assist — and cash — behind Trump’s inauguration have been opportunists whose politics shifted with the wind. “They have been all progressive Democrats till 11 pm, Jap Normal Time on the fifth of November,” he mentioned. “As soon as it was evident that Trump received, impulsively they grew to become MAGA.” In actuality, he claimed, the Silicon Valley elite are “techno-feudalists” whose firms needs to be damaged up. “I assist Lina Khan, she’s like, my hero,” Bannon mentioned of the previous Federal Commerce Fee chair, who’d introduced antitrust fits towards Google and Microsoft. (Musk has publicly attacked Khan on X.) And Trump, Bannon claimed, has stocked the FTC with “neo-Brandeisians,” antitrust champions who would dismantle the tech oligarchy.
“We wish to break up Google. We wish to break up Fb. We wish to break up Twitter. We predict they’re too highly effective and too centralized,” Bannon mentioned. “Their complete idea just isn’t capitalism. Their idea is, as an alternative of markets and income, it’s digital platforms, they usually’re rent-seekers. They’ve complete management, they usually take a look at folks as digital serfs.” Silicon Valley’s tech elite, he continued, made their cash from enterprise capitalists who redistributed wealth upward by raiding People’ pension funds; when their financial institution failed, they demanded that the federal government bail them out.
And what about Musk, the item of his criticism and recipient of multimillion-dollar authorities contracts? This was a “fairly complicated relationship,” Bannon mentioned. “I disagree with him on a lot that’s basic, nevertheless — and this is essential for folks to grasp — Elon backed our play. If Elon had not backed our play, the president nonetheless would have received, however it might’ve been a a lot rockier street.”
Musk has two “tactical nuclear weapons in trendy politics” within the type of “limitless cash and a media platform that he can, being a ‘free speech absolutist,’ push what he desires to push and shut down what he desires to close down,” Bannon informed me. And isn’t it higher to have a man like that in your aspect? “Elon wrote $50 million each month for 5 months. That’s by no means occurred earlier than in American historical past,” Bannon mentioned. “Once they discuss big donors — [George] Soros on the left, the Adelsons or the Mercers on the suitable — these individuals are writing $100 million, $150 million checks, that’s over a cycle. He wrote it in 5 months.” In different phrases, Musk’s exploitation of digital serfs may be dangerous, however not less than his cash goes to one thing good.
DOGE, Bannon mentioned, is finally the manifestation of the “deconstruction of the executive state,” a time period Bannon himself coined throughout the first Trump time period. The way in which he sees it, DOGE is an instrument of populist nationalism, an agent of change for the world Bannon desires to construct.
However, he’s nonetheless cautious. “He’s, look, he’s a power of nature,” Bannon informed me. However he’s additionally “the main transhumanist within the nation.” Musk and different transhumanists, Bannon informed me, are investing in applied sciences that can widen the hole between the wealthy and poor: “superior chip design, quantum computing, CRISPR, gene splicing.” Ultimately the gaps between wealthy and poor will transcend the fabric, penetrating our genetic make-up. There’s nothing much less populist than that.
“He swears he’s a populist nationalist,” Bannon mentioned of Musk. “I wish to see that. I do assume, within that insanity, I feel there’s one thing that may be honed for good.”
These conflicts and contradictions, heightened as they’re, matter little to the common CPAC attendee. Trump is their man, Bannon is their man, and now Musk is, too. They imagine everybody in MAGAworld is working towards a shared purpose: the flourishing of the American folks and the vanquishing of all enemies, international and home. Throughout her dialog with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), which doubled as a taping of an episode of his podcast — at one level he requested everybody within the viewers to subscribe — Legal professional Normal Pam Bondi described the Trump administration as a giant group of buddies working collectively for the frequent good. From the skin wanting in, it appears extra like a royal court docket filled with rival factions helmed by scheming viziers vying for the emperor’s favor. Nonetheless, they’re undoubtedly extra united than their opposition.
Trump remains to be the king; everybody in his orbit acknowledges him because the supply of their very own energy. However as with the emperors of outdated who bestowed an excessive amount of consideration on an overbearing court docket favourite, a shadow is falling over his reign. In an uncommon transfer, Trump’s identify wasn’t included on the checklist of audio system, although everybody knew he’d be there. (Trump was supposed to talk at CPAC 2016 however pulled out on the final minute.) I questioned if he needed his look to be a shock like Elon’s had been, if the play for secrecy was indicative of a lingering insecurity that Musk was encroaching on the president’s highlight. When Trump took the stage, the group went wild, because it all the time does, nevertheless it was nonetheless plain that Elon had stolen the present.
Within the lodge foyer that night, after Trump’s “shock” speech and the afternoon prayer, I overheard folks strategizing about methods to get into the DOGE appreciation get together in the event that they weren’t on the checklist. An RSVP hyperlink was circulating in DMs and group chats earlier than abruptly going lifeless. All anybody might say for sure is that it was being hosted by Sovereign Home — the extraordinarily on-line, far-right-adjacent New York Metropolis cultural occasion area — at a “personal residence.” However lists, I had been informed the night time of the Bannon get together, are malleable. (“I’m ready for my man to come back by,” somebody informed me.) Anybody who was anybody can be on the DOGE get together, as would these strangers and hangers-on who had managed to persuade the keepers of the checklist that they have been somebody value figuring out. Those that couldn’t get on the checklist and previous safety, nevertheless, would discover themselves paying $80 to get into Tom’s Watch Bar, which one attendee informed me ended up being “identical to the Bannon get together final yr, besides much less Nazis” and never as many huge names.
That night time, a small group of protesters gathered outdoors the Capitol Hill rental constructing the place the DOGE appreciation get together was going down, an old-fashioned that had been transformed into lofts by Brock Pierce, a child star turned crypto mogul. “You’re all Nazis,” one lady screamed at attendees by a megaphone. All of the factionalism, the infighting, the irreconcilable ideological contradictions, didn’t matter from the skin. And the partygoers — united by collective aid and smugness about getting on the unique invite checklist — might additionally ignore the variations amongst themselves, particularly since there was an open bar.