Bannon Rages At ‘On The Spectrum’ Tech Billionaires: A ‘Bunch of Geeks’ Who Can’t Take Criticism Aren’t Going to Run The U.S.
Steve Bannon lit into tech billionaires on his show Friday after Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk defended the use of H1-B visas to bring high-skilled migrant workers into the U.S.
Ramaswamy sparked a civil war within the MAGA world on Thursday when he made the argument that the U.S. needs to import high-skilled workers as American culture has led to mediocrity in the population.
“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” wrote Ramaswamy after several MAGA influencers slammed President-elect Donald Trump’s hiring of a prominent Indian American tech executive into his administration.
Bannon spoke with MAGA influencer Rogan O’Handley, aka DC Draino, and characterized the ongoing battle as “populist, nationalist versus elite globalist.”
“Now, when you say we’re going to work this out, you guys are going to get– [Laura] Loomer is on here. She’s banned. They’re trying to ban Gavin Wax. You’re going to be banned eventually by the ‘free-speech absolutist,’” Bannon began, noting Musk’s X was stripping the verification of commentators on the far-right who had criticized him.
“The nerds don’t take criticism. They’re kind of, you know, they’re a little bit all on the spectrum, right? They don’t know– they’re not deep in social skills,” Bannon continued, swiping at Musk and tech bros like Peter Thiel and Ramaswamy. He added:
And I say you can’t run a country by algorithm. You can’t run a country by the nerds that create and target– their companies all employ a handful of people. Right. They’re all math, you know, they’re all mathematicians, all about algorithms.
You can’t run a country like that. We’re a country, not an economy. And people say, Steve, you’re condemning us to be a third-world nation. Anything but, anything but, the American people rise to the occasion and the rising to the occasion now. But you can’t sit there and tell the American people this problem. We have a capitalist system with no capitalist. It’s a concentration of wealth and power.
And now you see what they’re doing with this, not just illegal immigration. Look, folks, this brought 15 million people into the country. I was on David Sacks’s show on the on election night, and I told the guy, hey, yeah, we’re going to deport all 15 million. He, like, freaked out. Seemed like a pretty good guy.
But I think this a guy that put out yesterday tweet said we want a billion people in the United States bring in five million a year. No! We do not and are not going to have a billion people in the United States of America. People are saying we’re kind of overcrowded right now, particularly out west. The folks are saying, hey, way too many people. You have a you have a bizarre idea of what this country is, no understanding of how we got here, and no idea of what we are going to be in the future. We are not going to be some anarcho-libertarian [state], you know, run by big tech oligarchs.
“That is not going to happen. Okay? We haven’t fought all these wars and haven’t gotten here to give it over to a bunch of geeks that you would stuff and that they’re all reacting to being stuffed in the locker in high school. They’re having a bad reaction,” Bannon concluded before asking O’Handley for his take.“Yeah that was again another, another tone-deaf post, you know Vivek and I have not always gotten along. We kind of have a little bit of a truce right now. But, you know, the American people are starting to see kind of what he believes on the H-1Bs,” O’Handley replied, adding:
This is not a surprise. Breitbart wrote an article about this in 2023. He wants uncapped H-1Bs. And listen, it’s the same as when the Democrats say who’s going to pick the crops? These new type of globalists, they’re saying, well, who’s going to do the coding? Right. It’s how about Americans? How about you pay market wages for American employees and you don’t trash American culture.
You don’t call us mediocre. Sir, we just took back this country from the most hostile regime that has ever occupied it. American grit did that. Not every American is exceptional, but it is–
Bannon jumped back in and said, “Hang on. Well, hang on. Hang on. DC, DC. We took it back from them. They were a huge part of the problem. They were being ignored. Every one of these guys was hand-in-glove. Look, I saw them all becoming supplicants to Trump in 16. And what they did is they embedded in the administrative state and some elements of the White House and the administration, and they kind of got their way. And I said the time when Zuckerberg and these guys start coming around the Oval Office, they’re down there now with their million dollar checks, you know, kissing the ring.”
Watch the clip above via War Room.
