CPAC provides a safe space for Elon Musk against Bannon and parental responsibility

Analysis: Musk, facing lawsuit from his child’s mother and DOGE outrage, runs to CPAC for a warm embrace, writes John Bowden. Elon Musk’s sudden invasion of Donald Trump’s inner circle and the launch of his DOGE effort to shutter whole government agencies came with more than a little controversy.

But CPAC in Maryland’s National Harbor this weekend was a safe space of refuge for the Twitter and Tesla CEO, even as his public and private behavior is increasingly coming under the eye of public scrutiny. That much was evident the first day of the convention when Musk’s loudest critic in the Republican Party — Steve Bannon — played nice with the billionaire and laughed away the animus for Musk he’d displayed on his War Room podcast for weeks.

Bannon spoke with CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and was asked about his past comments about the DOGE chief. He’d described Musk as a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in an interview with UnHerd just this week. “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions,” said the War Room host in the article published Tuesday.

To an Italian newspaper in January, he went further: “He’s a truly evil person. Stopping him has become a personal issue for me.”. Trump’s longtime ally has clashed with Musk on the issue of immigration in particular since the 2024 election in November. In late December and January, they fought over the H-1B visa, used by companies including Musk’s to recruit high-skilled workers from abroad. Musk emerged from that scuffle politically bruised but intact after having vowed to go to “war” with Bannon over the issue.

In his CNN interview, Bannon’s tone was quite different as he matched his energy to the Musk-friendly venue in which he was appearing. “Elon’s doing some great work,” he said after being asked why more Republicans were not speaking out about Musk. “I’m a huge supporter of the deconstruction of the administrative state and what Elon’s doing in DOGE. I’m a big supporter of that.”.

Musk’s own CPAC performance was on Thursday. The DOGE chief wore gaudy sunglasses and a gold chain as he declared “I am become meme” from the stage of the convention, drawing awkward laughs from the audience. At that moment, CPAC was a literal safe space for Musk as the singer Grimes, with whom he has a son, publicly pleaded with her former boyfriend to respond to an apparent urgent medical issue his child faced. Simultaneously another woman prepared a lawsuit against Musk to claim sole legal custody of another one of the billionaire’s offspring.

And it was clear why. Musk’s DOGE personnel cuts remain wildly popular with the MAGA right, even barring his unusual antics and occasional tendency to overshadow his boss, Donald Trump. Speaker after speaker pointed to Musk’s efforts as the biggest source of the second Trump administration’s political victories during the president’s first month in office.

Mike Benz, a former State Department official and conservative activist, gushed about DOGE’s “incredibly immaculate technical implementation” of cuts to USAID and other agencies. Mercedes Schlapp, CPAC co-host, asserted to Politico that Musk was “delivering” the implementation of Trump’s agenda.

Others at the convention downplayed the tensions that have arisen between the publicly childish Musk and others within the MAGA sphere. Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, is set to hold a campaign event alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s onetime DOGE co-chief, this coming week. LaRose is running for state auditor; Ramaswamy is widely expected to formally announce his campaign for governor. Despite the impending announcement, the former 2024 presidential candidate was not slated to speak at CPAC 2025.

“I don't view it that way,” LaRose said of the reported conflict between the two and praised them for being “insightful” enough to understand that both could not remain in charge of DOGE. “Honestly, there's always this palace intrigue from outside folks that assume that things are much more dramatic than they actually are.”.

“I think what you have is you've got two visionaries, two strong type A leaders, right with the bank and with us, they had a very unified idea of what this thing should do, but there were starting to be some differences of opinion on what direction it should go on the details.”.

Trump himself has long been reported by Trumpworld insiders to encourage social and sometimes political competition between figures in his close proximity, though with the caveat that getting ahead of the boss or overshadowing him is generally ill-advised.

It’s apparent that Musk will keep enjoying success in Trumpworld as long as he delivers results — without too much embarrassment — for the president. And that may be the secret sauce to surviving the right-wing onslaught and retaining the ear of the president (with more Oval Office access than Bannon and the rest): by winning.