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We may be seeing some of the first major fissures forming in the dalliance between Donald Trump and his billionaire backer Elon Musk.
Over the holiday week, Musk entered into a heated online conflict with notable pro-Trump figure and culture warrior Laura Loomer over the president-elect’s immigration policy, the Washington Post reports.
The debacle saw Musk receive rare pushback from his far-right supporters for advocating laxer immigration policy to court skilled foreign workers, and culminated with Loomer, who has over 1.4 million followers on X, claiming that her account was being silenced by the platform’s billionaire owner for espousing her nationalist views. The infighting could augur a growing rift between the tech figures who have come to support Trump and the extreme right wing of his base.
“It’s a sign of future conflicts,” Samuel Hammond, a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, told WaPo. “This is like the pregame.”
At issue is Trump’s decision to name Sriram Krishan, an Indian-born tech entrepreneur, as his senior policy advisor on AI. Loomer is not a fan of Krishan’s history of supporting policies that would more easily allow skilled workers to come to the US and stay for longer periods. And though she and her contingent denies it, she’s also an unrepentant racist, viciously denigrating Indians as “third world invaders” in a flurry of other descriptors that are too foul and too numerous to repeat here.
At any rate, such visas, which provide what’s known as H-1B nonimmigrant status, are essential to the tech industry and others that depend on a steady supply of eager-to-work, highly educated professionals from abroad to perform very technical jobs. As nationalists like Loomer took to criticize Krishan’s nomination, tech figures, some originally immigrants themselves, came to his defense, including Trump advisers David Sacks and Vivek Ramaswamy, championing high-skilled immigration as the lifeblood of America.
But most notably among them was Musk, himself an H-1B worker at one point, and who continues to recruit foreign workers to his companies like Tesla and SpaceX. He has claimed that a “permanent shortage” of top engineering talent is the “fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.”
“The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” Musk wrote on X on Christmas day. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be.”
It’s not everyday that Musk sounds like the adult in the room — but this logic wasn’t enough to bridle the current of vociferous hatred coming from the rightmost corners of the Trump camp.
For one, Musk’s post received major pushback from followers questioning his dedication to supporting “real” Americans.
Meanwhile, Loomer kept railing against Musk — and immigrants. “We have to put our foot down and let them know MAGA is anti-Big Tech,” she wrote.
By Friday, she was claiming that Musk had retaliated by revoking her verified status and removing her paid subscribers. “So much for free speech,” she posted.
Amidst the height of the infighting, right-wing commentator and frequent Musk reply guy Ian Miles Cheong summed it up with a sagacious observation: “It’s wild to see MAGA turning against Elon, Vivek, David Sacks.”
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