MAGA podcaster Steve Bannon ripped into a major business partner of Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday, highlighting cracks in the Trump coalition just one day after the Republican Party suffered bruising losses in elections around the country.
Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, took issue with an argument advanced by Trump Jr.’s associate Chris Buskirk in a lengthy Washington Post profile on a shadowy group of conservative donors known as the Rockbridge Network. Silicon Valley multibillionaire Peter Thiel and future Vice President JD Vance “convened” the group’s first meeting in 2019, according to the Post.
In the piece, Buskirk defended the existence of an “aristocracy,” claiming such a class was inevitable and the question was simply what form it took. The Post writes:
His various projects echo what some on the right call “aristopopulism” and aim to build a bridge between wealthy capitalists and the working-class people they intend to represent, according to interviews with Buskirk and nine other people in his inner circle, profitably reindustrializing the country and tying their interests to that of their base.
“You either have an extractive elite — an oligarchy — or you have a productive elite — an aristocracy — in every society,” he said in an interview in his office in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Many innovative periods in history have been driven by such an aristocracy, Buskirk argues, a point he makes in his 2023 book, “America and the Art of the Possible.” “In the classic Greek sense,” the term isn’t pejorative, he says, but “a proper elite that takes care of the country and governs it well so that everyone prospers.”
Bannon responded during his War Room podcast on Wednesday morning, referencing Buskirk’s quote without mentioning him by name.
“People on the right, you know, Peter Thiel and all these guys — we need an aristocracy, the MAGA people are too dumb,” Bannon said, telling his audience, “Yeah, that would be you.”
Bannon, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, then offered his rebuttal.
“Not only are we not going to need an aristocracy, we’re not going to have an aristocracy,” Bannon said. “Not in this country. Not in this time.”
“You’re playing right into the hands of Mamdani,” Bannon said, referring to the New York City mayor-elect.
Buskirk and Trump Jr. are business partners at venture capital firm 1789 Capital, which reportedly manages more than $2 billion in assets. Since Trump’s reelection and the addition of Trump Jr. to the firm, 1789 Capital has enjoyed “a dramatic expansion in its portfolio to include defense contractors, AI startups and other companies that ethics experts say could benefit from federal contracts and regulatory changes,” according to Reuters.
1789 Capital’s co-founder and president, Omeed Malik, is also the CEO of a special-purpose acquisition company called Colombier Acquisition Corp. III. Trump Jr. and Fox News host Laura Ingraham are both directors at Colombier, which is attempting to raise $260 million in an upcoming initial public offering. As Media Matters previously reported, the partnership between Trump Jr. and Ingraham creates a litany of possible conflicts of interest and potential for corruption.
In addition to serving as the nucleus of the Rockbridge Network, Buskirk is the publisher of MAGA media website American Greatness, which traffics in January 6 apologia, anti-Black racism, and xenophobia.
Despite Bannon’s stated antipathy toward the aristocracy, in the past he has benefitted from the largess of at least one of its members. Rebekah Mercer was a top funder for Bannon until 2018, when she reportedly cut him off. She is also a co-founder of 1789 Capital.
