Bannon World Turns Against JD Vance as MAGA Civil War Heats Up

It’s the holiday season and John Lennon may be on the radio, but the MAGA civil war that has dominated headlines over the back half of 2025 is far from over.

Indeed, the coalition put together by President Donald Trump is only continuing to fracture, as two of its most prominent principals — podcaster Steve Bannon and Vice President JD Vance — appear to be increasingly at odds.

While Bannon and Vance both hail from the Republican Party’s populist wing, Bannon World is accusing the VP of forming a fist inside of his velvet glove.

Over the last few days, Grace Chong, the CFO and COO of Bannon’s media company, has launched a series of stunning attacks on the odds-on frontrunner to succeed Trump as the GOP’s standard bearer.

On Friday, Chong retweeted a clip of white nationalist Nick Fuentes excoriating Vance — whom he referred to as “jelly donuts” — over his positions on immigration and Israel, as well as his relationships with billionaires Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

The following day, Chong ripped into Vance over the Trump administration’s response to the Somali fraud scandal unfolding in Minnesota. After Vance submitted that “What’s happening in Minnesota is a microcosm of the immigriation [sic] fraud in our system. Politicans [sic] like it because they get power. Welfare cheats like it because they get rich. But it’s a zero sum game, and they’re stealing both money and political power from Minnesotans” in a post on X, Chong deemed his commentary “word salad.”

Then, after Vance praised Nick Shirley for confronting potential scammers in Minnesota by writing that “This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes,” Chong pounced again, this time posting a picture of Vance and his wife with the caption “We are going to f*cking do nothing” emblazoned underneath their faces.

“Where is the DOJ/FBI Joint Task Force??” she asked in a follow-up post.

Bannon himself went on share a screenshot of Vance’s tweet and opine that “Nick is a Patriot but American Citizens must NOT depend on the media — DoJ/FBI Joint Task Force with DHS/HHS/State Dept should have been deployed months ago so now we can perp walk or deport.”

Then, Chong reacted to an anti-deportation post from the All-In Podcast‘s Jason Calacanis by again assailing Vance.

The dawn of a new week didn’t stop the onslaught, either. On Monday morning, Chong reacted to pictures of Minnesota Democrats eating Somali food and wearing Somali garb by posting a picture of Vance visiting Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall in a yarmulke.

Notably, Bannon fired a shot across Vance’s bow during a segment about the 2028 presidential race on his show last month.

“I will tell anybody in that administration — JD, Marco [Rubio] — if you’re not blowing the tech bro-, right now they’re owned by the tech bros. They’re owned by the broligarchs and they’re owned by David Sacks and his crowd,” said Bannon at the time. “The big fight coming for MAGA is not really Conservative Inc. because they’re not as powerful as they were, but the tech bros are. They believe they’re dominant. They believe they’re taking over the MAHA movement, they’re taking over the MAGA movement, they got guys-, this guy Isaacman, whoever at the White House — and I know who you are — they got Isaacman back in as head of NASA, right, who’s just gonna give a contract to Elon. That whole game of the tech bros is gonna come to crashing down in an end. Okay, it’s gonna be brutal but it’s gotta be done. We cannot allow these guys, who are all progressive Democrats, they’re all progressive Democrats hiding-, they’re the wolves in sheep’s clothing so. And if you’re in the White House not standing up to it, you’re part of the problem and that’s all gonna get exposed.”