MAGA vs DOGE— This Has Already Gotten Popcorn Worthy, Especially Because There Are No Good Guys

Who Would You Rather See Dead On The Floor, Loomer + Bannon Or Musk + Ramaswamy?

Ramaswamy and Musk in one corner, Trump’s nativists led by Laura Loomer in the other. I think this is the tweet by Ramaswamy that caused MAGA world to explode in acrimony and xenophobia. Many of them already don’t like Ramawamy because he’s… well, he’s born in the U.S. but…funny name, funny color, bunch of things they don’t like. As Ben Berkowitz and Zach Basu put it, “while some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.”

He ended the tweet by suggesting that “This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.”

It all started when Musk had Trump appoint one of his cronies, Sriram Krishnan— from Twitter and more recently from Andreessen Horowitz— the AI czar. That triggered a nice ole MAGA racial and xenophobic backlash against Indians on Sunday. That Silicon Valley contingent is fine when the nativism and racism are directed against Mexicans but against Indians? Watch out! Ramaswamy was about this much away from denouncing white Americans as retards on Thursday.

“The problem for many MAGA adherents,’ wrote Bass and Berkowitz, “though, was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America. It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who ‘perform services in a specialty obligation’ but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth [and Trump-owned businesses]. In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated. ‘The Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B's. Then why did everyone want to come here?’ right-wing personality Mike Cernovich responded to Ramaswamy on Twitter. ‘There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers,’ Nikki Haley, the former GOP presidential candidate and herself a daughter of Indian immigrants, wrote.

Once Loomer started weighing in, Musk simply suspended her from Twitter and took away all her right-wing status symbols and rights. She flipped out and went to war with Musk. Defending Ramaswamy he tweeted “that there aren’t enough ‘super motivated’ and ‘super talented engineers’ in the United States… While Musk and Ramaswamy have routinely demonized migrants trying to cross the U.S. border, they both apparently support the H-1B visa program, which companies use to bring in high-skilled foreign workers. Among both the left and right, these visas are viewed as allowing companies to import cheaper, exploitable workers who must keep their jobs if they want to stay in the country.  Loomer was far from the only conservative incensed by Musk’s comments, and she furiously attacked him on Twitter with insults that rival Trump’s. ‘You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago after Trump almost had his head blown off in Butler,’ Loomer wrote. After Musk said legal immigration was necessary to bring in ‘the top ~0.1% of engineering talent,’ Loomer noted his electric car company Tesla has used H-1B visas to bring in some workers earning roughly $70,000 per year. ‘Nobody can afford to live off of $70,000 a year in today’s America. Stop crying about declining birth rates when you want us to live like a bunch of welfare queens,’ she wrote. Loomer separately called Musk ‘a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago,’ Loomer added. Liberals who dislike Musk were surprised to find themselves taking Loomer’s side. [Ann] Coulter posted Thursday, ‘American workers can leave a company. Imported H1B workers can’t.’ Loomer wrote on Thursday that her account verification was taken away, her subscriptions were deactivated, and she no longer has X Premium despite having paid for it. X Premium is a way that users are able to monetize their accounts. ‘My voice has been stifled and my reach as a journalist has been restricted because I disagree with the owner of Twitter over an original Trump policy,’ Loomer tells Rolling Stone. ‘We either have free speech for all, or free speech for nobody.’”

For his part, Musk referred to Loomer and her allies as “contemptible fools” who should be purged from the Republican Party. Trump hasn’t taken sides yet but “Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday. ‘H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,’ the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily. ‘This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,’ Bannon added.

And then last night, Musk laid down the gauntlet, pledging in no uncertain terms— so that even Señor T would understand— that he’s going to war to defend the H-1b visa program for foreign tech workers, while branding, as though just discovering this for the first time, some Republicans and MAGAts as “hateful, unrepentant racists.” Remember, Ramaswamy had already accused these very same people of defending an American “mediocrity culture.” Trump is probably extremely unsettled. He's going to have to tame Musk now.