Musk, Ramaswamy Come Under MAGA Fire
Oligarchy and populism don't mix.
Yesterday morning, I started seeing stories about a Twitter spat between the DOGE boys and Laura Loomer, a far-right “influencer” of whom I was only marginally aware.
The New Republic (“MAGA in Total Mayhem as Laura Loomer Goes to War With Elon Musk“):
Right-wing influencer and Donald Trump gadfly Laura Loomer is attacking Elon Musk, seemingly over his desire for more immigrants to work and study in science and technology fields in the United States.
In several posts on X Thursday, Loomer railed against Musk and his influence on Trump. She attacked Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” project with Vivek Ramaswamy, calling it a “vanity project” on Wednesday before accusing it as a smokescreen for “the pet projects of tech bro billionaires” on Thursday. She also claimed that there would be a falling out between Musk and Trump soon.
In response, Musk accused Loomer of being a troll and said she should be ignored. Loomer continued her attacks unabated, calling the tech CEO a pawn of China, resorting to homophobic and racist insults, and accusing Musk of having “bought his way into MAGA.”
“Remember when you voted for Biden and propped up @GovRonDeSantis and you said Trump was too old? We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing,” Loomer wrote in one post, and in a follow-up, she called Musk “a total f****ing drag on the Trump transition.”
“He’s 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 posted.
Loomer, renowned for her Islamophobia, racism, and conspiracy theories, appears to be opposing Musk for those very reasons, as her virulent racism drives her anti-immigration views. Her attacks on Musk are flavored with that racism, from her invoking of China to repeated attacks on people from India.
On a related note, Musk’s DOGE sidekick, Vivek Ramaswamy, also got piled on Thursday by MAGA for his own immigration views after making the glaring mistake of claiming there were shortcomings in American culture, fueling racist attacks from the far right. It seems that Musk and Ramaswamy are already wearing out their welcome in Trumpworld, and soon might anger the big guy himself.
The Independent (“‘Should MAGA stay home in 2026?’ Laura Loomer wages ‘racist’ war against ‘tech bros’ over Indian migrants“):
Trump acolyte and self-proclaimed “proud Islamophobe”Laura Loomer is threatening to tell MAGA to “stay home” during the next midterm elections amid an escalating feud with “tech bros” Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy over Silicon Valley’s reliance on foreign-born workers.
Loomer has engaged in a multi-day social media tirade over President-elect Donald Trump’s recent appointment of Indian-American entrepreneur Sriram Krishnan as a senior policy adviser for AI, prompting the loyal MAGA supporter to rage about Krishnan’s support of H-1B visas for Indian immigrants.
With the Trump administration promising an immediate crackdown on immigration, Loomer has launched a series of attacks on Indians described as “racist” following Krishnan’s appointment, which she called “deeply disturbing.” Describing workers from India as “third-world invaders,” Loomer also took issue with Musk and Ramaswamy defending the tech industry importing “super talented engineers” from overseas.
“The average IQ in India is 76,” Loomer tweeted at one point, along with several other posts disparaging Indians and their home country.
Loomer, who previously sparked backlash for making bigoted remarks about Kamala Harris’s Indian heritage, has found support among what some have described as “OG MAGA” in her civil war against Trump-supporting tech entrepreneurs. In particular, she has received quite a bit of backing from “groypers,” the followers of notorious white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
The whole thing struck me as weird but not enough to write about. Loomer is obviously a racist loon. It did, however, spark a social media debate over our immigration policy.
NY Post (“Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy in fiery spat with MAGA allies over foreign worker visas: ‘Essential for America to keep winning’“):
Tech titan Elon Musk — who has quickly become President-elect Donald Trump’s right-hand man — got into a fiery spat Thursday with MAGA allies over foreign worker visas, arguing along with Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy that the program is key for American innovation.
The billionaire DOGE bosses lashed out the day after Christmas Day at some of Trump’s staunchest supporters and other immigration hawks for opposing the H-1B program, which lets highly skilled foreign workers enter the US for companies who sponsor them.
“I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning,” Musk wrote on X, comparing the US to a sports team bringing in athletes to boost their game.
The richest man in the world had been agreeing with his DOGE counterpart Ramaswamy, who went to argue that American “culture” was celebrating “mediocrity” — sparking the initial rift with members of MAGA world who want to restrict even legal immigration into the US.
“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture,” Ramaswamy wrote in a lengthy post on X.
“Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH.”
Ramaswamy then laid out how popular American culture, since at least the 1990s, has favored “the prom queen over the math olympiad champ” and “the jock over the valedictorian,” allowing other countries like China to retain talented engineers — while the US lost top recruits.
“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG,” he explained.
“‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”
Those close to Trump are hoping the pair won’t fracture the MAGA coalition, with many expressing frustration that Musk and Ramaswamy aired their opinions so publicly, sources familiar with talks going on at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort told The Post.
[…]
MAGA acolytes like Laura Loomer and right-wing firebrands such as Ann Coulter and Mike Cernovich shot back that Musk and Ramaswamy were only favoring foreign labor for their own Silicon Valley needs.
Their criticisms noted how the visas make it difficult for foreign nationals to leave jobs — and drive down the wages of American workers.
“American workers can leave a company. Imported H-1B workers can’t. Tech wants indentured servants, not ‘high-skilled’ workers,” Coulter said.
“This is why some find this discussion frustrating. Elon is right about the problem. Others are right that the solution is flawed. We ended our farm system, we lost our bench. BIG TECH did this. Now they want more H-1B’s for their self-inflicted wound,” added Cernovich.
It got even weirder yesterday.
Axios (“Musk calls MAGA element ‘”‘contemptible fools'”‘ as virtual civil war brews“):
On Friday, cartoonist and right-wing commentator Scott Adams posted on X that MAGA was “taking a page from Democrats on how to lose elections while feeling good about themselves.”
Musk agreed, and took it a step further.
“And those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem,” he posted.
For people used to being called “deplorables” by Democrats, the condemnation from one of the most important advisors in Trump’s inner circle stoked instant outrage.
“Calling people who have their country’s best interests at heart and wanting to NOT sell out the American people ‘contemptible fools’ is the biggest L that I’ve seen Elon make in a long time. Dude needs to relax,” gaming streamer Hooks posted.
Right-wing activist Laura Loomer tagged Trump in her message. “The Trump base is being replaced by Big Tech executives. So sad to see this. I feel so sad for MAGA,” she said. Loomer has alleged Musk was censoring her for her opposition to his immigration comments.
Andrew Torba, the CEO of the far-right social network Gab, said in an X post: “He’s declaring war on us btw. Should go over well for him as it has for everyone else who has tried.”
Washington Examiner (“Trump base splits over Musk and Ramaswamy’s support for foreign worker visas“):
“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,” said Steve Bannon on his War Room show Friday morning, calling the arguments in favor of H-1B a “total scam.”
Loyal Trump supporters criticized the two tech entrepreneurs over their stance. Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked the two to stay out of immigration policy.
“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender – and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” Gaetz wrote in a Thursday social media post. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”
[…]
“We’ve already started to see a problem where it looks like Musk is calling the shots like what we last saw last week with government funding,” said a GOP Senate aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity in an effort to reflect candidly on the situation. “We need [Musk and Ramaswamy] to stay out of the conversations about immigration policy on social media. It’s divisive, and I’m sure the incoming administration would prefer to have these conversations behind the scenes instead of debating them out in the open.”
“We are about to have a GOP trifecta, and we need to be united as a party, and this only proves to divide us further,” the aide added.
Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments also drew criticism from former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who called on Trump to prioritize American workers over foreign ones.
“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,” Haley wrote Thursday.
The whole thing is just bizarre.
Musk and Ramaswamy make the traditional arguments for H1B visa expansion: there’s simply a huge demand in the tech industry for people with advanced degrees in science and engineering and not enough Americans with those skills. India, in particular, has a huge supply of people with those backgrounds who, conveniently enough, happen to speak English.
The notion that these immigrants are indentured servants is absurd. They’re paid handsomely and, while it’s harder for them to switch jobs than it is for American citizens, they nonetheless do so routinely. Indeed, as a recent CATO report notes,
On another point, H‑1B job shifting is more common than H‑1B workers starting H‑1B employment for the first time. In 2023, about 61 percent of all H‑1B workers starting with a new employer were existing H‑1B workers hired away from other employers in the United States. This means that US employers are more likely to hire an H‑1B worker already in the United States in H‑1B status as they are to hire a new H‑1B worker not already with H‑1B status.
That’s actually not surprising because the visas themselves are a scarce resource. As an October report by the American Immigration Council noted,
Since the category was created in 1990, Congress has limited the number of H-1Bs made available each year. The current annual statutory cap is 65,000 visas, with 20,000 additional visas for foreign professionals who graduate with a master’s degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution of higher learning (Figure 1). For Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the cap was reached on December 13, 2023.
The Fiscal Year begins on 1 October. Rather clearly, the demand vastly exceeds the supply.
Let’s dismiss out of hand Loomer’s racist nonsense about Indians having low IQs and companies hiring dumb engineers from India to save money. We’ve already dealt with the Coulter-Bannon argument that companies are hiring them because they’re “indentured servants.” The adjacent argument, that hiring tens of thousands of foreign-born STEM workers drives down the wages for their American counterparts, has some merit.
A 2017 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research sheds useful light on the matter:
In Understanding the Economic Impact of the H-1B Program on the U.S. (NBER Working Paper 23153), John Bound, Gaurav Khanna, and Nicolas Morales explore how the availability of such workers has affected the welfare of domestic workers, firms, and consumers.
Based on their model, the researchers calculate that the influx of foreign-born computer scientists enabled by the H-1B program had a positive effect on the U.S. IT sector, and consequently the U.S. economy, but had significant distributional effects. They estimate that absent the influx of foreigners, U.S. computer scientists would have earned between 2.6 and 5.1 percent more in 2001. Moreover, some U.S. workers switched to other occupations, lowering the number of domestic computer scientists by between 6 and 11 percent. The picture is brighter in other respects: Foreign scientists were found to be strong contributors to innovation and productivity. That translated into wage and job gains in related fields, and into more choice and lower prices for consumers.
The research focuses on the Internet boom years, when workers in computer-related occupations became the largest share of H-1B visa holders. The cap on visas was initially 65,000 a year. That became a binding constraint in the mid-1990s and it was raised to 115,000 in 1999. The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that during the late 1990s, 28 percent of all U.S. programming jobs were held by H-1B visa holders.
Although the H-1B legislation stipulates that visa holders must be paid the prevailing wages for their jobs, critics of the H-1B program argue that visa holders have little bargaining power because they can work only for the companies that sponsor them. “It seems reasonable to assume that employers must expect some cost or productivity advantage when hiring foreigners, however modest,” the researchers note. “If not, why would they incur the associated effort and expense?”
The researchers calculate that wages, domestic employment, and, as a result, college enrollment in computer science would have grown even more rapidly than it did, had immigration been restricted. Indeed, the fraction of U.S. college degrees in computer science would have been higher by 1.3 to 2.6 percentage points in 2001. The reduction in labor costs associated with this program spurred growth and innovation in the computer science sector and increased productivity in the economy as a whole. Lower labor costs also increased profits, enabling new companies to enter the field. Growth in the computer science sector also sparked expansion in related fields, raising wages for college graduates who were not computer scientists and for non-college graduates.
For consumers, the researchers estimate, the H-1B program has resulted in lower prices for technology-related products, and has led to a higher rate of product innovation. The innovation effects are particularly important in assessing consumer welfare.
So, overall, it’s good for the economy and drives innovation, but it creates downward pressure on wages and marginally lowers the incentives for Americans to pursue STEM degrees.
To the extent the MAGA movement is driven by the concerns of non-college-educated folks in the working class, though, it’s all to the good. Why should they care that the wages of college-educated elites in the Socialist Republic of California are being driven down slightly? The working class are merely consumers, not creators, of technology and immigration is both driving innovation and keeping prices low.
Obviously, if MAGA’s obsession with immigration is driven mostly by racism, or its adjacent desire to preserve America as a predominantly European and Judeo-Christian nation, it makes more sense. But, Loomer notwithstanding, the animus in that regard mostly seems directed at Blacks and Latinos, with East and South Asians typically seen as the Right Kind of Immigrants, respected for their cultural mores and work ethic.
This could also simply be elite-on-elite violence. Gaetz’s take here seems likeliest to me to be the more widespread within the MAGA core: they welcome Musk’s deep pockets and ability to shape the conversation via the platform formerly known as Twitter but don’t want him sharing control of the social messaging.
“The whole thing is just bizarre.”
Oh come on, James. You’re a father. Didn’t your kids ever do that toddler-bickering thing where they accused you of liking the other child better or doing more with them? Believe me, the issue is not over immigration or Elon Musk’s hiring practices. This is flat out jealousy that Musk is getting all kinds of attention for his support of Trump and they’re not.
I suspect someone in Trump-land is encouraging Loomer (btw, spelling mistake in your 2nd last paragraph: “Coomer”) to go after Musk because there are many people having sad toddler fee-fees about the situation. Hell, that someone might actually be Trump himself – if she bitched to him about her problems with X, he could easily encourage her to go public with them. It’s a way of smacking Musk around without any risk to himself.
The only thing that surprises me is that they couldn’t wait until after the inauguration. Pass the popcorn.
Ha. So S. African oligarch Elon Musk wants to mass deport migrants who harvest our crops, build our homes, clean our property, nurse our sick, and manufacture our goods — but mass import migrants who get jobs Americans really want.
Is there a lack of smart, well-adjusted American workers? If so, maybe it’s because we allow selfish, rapaciously greedy billionaires like Vivek Ramaladingdong and illegal H1B immigrant Elon Musk to hoard most of America’s wealth and resources. Instead, we should be taxing the filthy rich to invest in healthcare, housing, education, clean energy, and mass transit.
But the New Right is dedicated to keeping Americans less educated, less happy, less healthy. So of course tensions within MAGA’s identity politics — including the anti-immigrant bile used to manipulate the gullible — will split their fragmented coalition united only by shared grievances. When Trump Republicans can’t agree on which out-groups to otherize, scapegoat, and hate, infighting will follow.
Too bad a plurality of voters chose Trump’s divisive identity politics over Kamala’s campaign of ideas, and over Democratic policy plans to uplift all Americans. Oops.
As Not The IT Dept. notes, I assume you meant Loomer instead of Coomer in spots.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump isn’t that vain or gullible or stupid to allow Elon Musk to “slither in” and grab Trump by the balls is he?
Loomer is not saying that is she?
(When you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.)
I think you’re kind of missing the bigger picture here, Dr. J.
Yes, the fight started out over immigration. But once it escalated, the MAGAs started treating the billionaires the same way they act towards Democrats. And more importantly, the Billionaire Boys’ Club adopted the very postures that MAGA’s claim that Dems hold of them — that they’re a bunch of ignorant whiners who are failing only because they are too inferior to compete in a complex world. And Bannon, who has a lot of power with these people, seems to be trying to use them to push Musk back away from Trump.
So far, it’s just amusing. But if this doesn’t go away fast, Trump is going to have to step in. And at that point he’s going to make a choice — does he support the MAGAs or the billionaires who are sucking up to him?
The smart thing for Trump to do would be to publicly denounce Musk and Vivek while privately assuring them he’s still on their side. But I’m not convinced Trump is clever enough to pull that off. And I’m not convinced that Musk’s ego is small enough to allow that to happen…
Is too much schadenfreude unhealthy? I feel like being this ironically amused has to be unhealthy >:3
I assume this is a rhetorical question. (And no, Trump isn’t smart enough to play both sides. Nor are MAGAts smart enough to not get played anyway. Expect them to buy that Trump’s playing the oligarchs when Scott Adams explains it to them.)
They just don’t see how this is all part of Xlon Cisgender Felon’s Brain Emperor Mars of God and Phobos to reach Mars within the next two years.
But that’s because only very smart and highly moral people can see it 😀
Trump likes having his underlings fighting with each other, this is normal for a Trump-as-leader situation. I don’t see this as much of a story, just business as usual.
I will not be buying any popcorn.
I have to take issue with your subtitle. The Republican Party has long been a party of oligarchs with a populist facade. Think back to the Tea Party, astroturfed into prominence with Koch money. Or the anti-abortion, pro-gun Supremos funneled through the Koch fueled Federalist Society. Or the recent interviews with Trump voters sure that Elon’s cost cutting won’t affect their benefits. I’ve always wondered if the base would ever figure out they’re being served Culture War theatre in lieu of any tangible economic benefit. This Loomer kerfuffle seems more about immigration theatre than the anti-elite base realizing they’re supporting the elite. I suspect the outcome will be Elon learning to stay behind the green curtain.
@gVOR10: ” I suspect the outcome will be Elon learning to stay behind the green curtain.”
That would certainly be the wise thing to do. But do you really think the man who spent 44 billion to ensure that he would always have the last word is capable of it?
@gVOR10: ” I suspect the outcome will be Elon learning to stay behind the green curtain.”
That would certainly be the wise thing to do. But do you really think the man who spent 44 billion to ensure that he would always have the last word is capable of it?
@Stormy Dragon: I propose making National Schadenfreude Day a Federal holiday.
@wr: An excellent question. Balloon Juice quotes an Axios headline,
BalloonJuice adds the obvious comment echoing Adlai Stevenson’s answer when told all thinking people would vote for him, “But I need a majority.”
I think the real conflict here is Musk saying, “Don’t you realize we need these high tech foreigners to support my profits?” and Loomer replying, “Don’t you realize those people are brown?”
I was a nerd who was real good at math and not at a varsity sport. I think that Ramaswarmy’s comments are not incorrect. We Americans clearly celebrate jocks. My roommate in college played chess and had a FIDE rating of 2100 which didn’t pull chicks. That is our culture. I did wind up making more money than 99.9% of the population and married a real looker, but it was a struggle.
The average IQ of India doesn’t matter. Musk and Ramaswarmy want to skim the cream. I wonder if top graduates of IIT find the US attractive. We are clearly expressing more xenophobia. A highly talented young Indian might see other places as more welcoming.
As far back as the late stages of the 2016 primaries, I was certain the felon would eventually alienate his base, because that’s what he does with everyone else once they are used up. I’ve been puzzled and disappointed since. Part of it is his base is more like a cult. Cultists are notorious for ignoring and/or whitewashing mistreatment by the cult leader.
Things might have changed by now.
To begin with, the base has been used up. The felon can’t run for a third term. Oh, he might get the Leo Court to rule he can, but I don’t think he will bother*. He’d be 82 by 2028, if he’s still alive (Hera forbid), and what would be the point then. So, he doesn’t need them for the next election, because there is no next election. Midterms? He own’t be on the ballot.
For another, much as he has grifted off the base, President Xlon just handed him a quarter billion, and other tech oligarchs are lining his pockets with bribes posing as donations for the inauguration. No amount of the world’s tackiest sneakers and bibles would come close. President Xlon might just hand him a few billion by “merging” Pravda Social with Xitter.
We’ll see. I’ve been wrong before (shocking, I know).
*He might bother as he enters the lame duckish second half of his term, in particular if the Democrats win back the House and Senate, because how else is he going to be the center of attention?
@gVOR10:
I. An answer that: no. These people already believe fifty mutually exclusive things about Trump. That type of mentality is incapable of learning, or equally likely, os proof that they don’t want to learn the truth.
@charontwo:
Hasn’t Trump said fairly often that he likes chaos, and deliberately sets people against each other? He likes this. He believes it keeps everyone loyal to him.
@DK: The coalition will not split until Trump is out of office—more importantly, the bulk of avg IQ regular voters and occasionally motivated voters will continue to see Trump and MAGA as the leader of choice because the alternative is Democrats—a rabid group of egg-headed pedos intent on destroying America with DEI and reverse-racism; who can’t defend themselves outside of MSNBC, CNN, Mother Jones, The Root, and Pod Save America.
It would be great if my Handyman would get FB and YT content on his smartphone exposing Swami, who want’s his tribe of Indians back home to take super high-paying American Jobs while restoring wage-grade, barely-skilled labor currently done by Mexicans and South Americans to (White) Americans. His head would explode—but all he’ll get is content on how Swami & Musk (the anti Lewis & Martin) are owning the Libs hell bent on spending the Country into bankruptcy so they can institute Communism.
@wr:
No, Musk cannot possibly be self-effacing.
I don’t think this will destroy Trump or anything so dramatic. But cracks tend to widen, not to heal themselves. Given a choice between the ultimate Rich Boy Swingin’ Dick, and the MAGA horde of shrieking Karens and middle-aged gun nuts, I have a hard time seeing Trump choosing what he must think of as the suckers.
@Jim Brown 32:
Bear in mind that we don’t need to move vast numbers of people, if we could manage to trim MAGA by even 2% and hold our own people, we’d win.
Unfortunately we aren’t going to hold all our people, we’re more likely to break into factions and form the Traditional Democrat Circular Firing Squad. And that TDCFS is probably unavoidable, because we need to develop a new message, one capable of attracting and motivating more voters, and a large number of Democrats are not yet ready to admit that we have failed and need to change.
Over this next 2 year cycle we need to work to avoid a complete fragmentation. Holding the pieces together while embracing necessary change, is going to take a while. Fortunately we have leaders like. . . um. . . Chuck Schumer? Sigh.
Musk & Vivek talked to white people the way white people talk to black people and the white people DID NOT react well.
@Michael Reynolds:
One thing to hope for is that nonwhite people- Asians, South Asians, Hispanics- witness how fast they are ejected from the Real American category.
A much slimmer possibility is that white working class people begin to prioritize their material interests over their identity interests. But I won’t hold my breath.
@Jim Brown 32:
I’d like to disagree with that. I’d really like to be able to disagree with that. But I can’t.
I’ve commented before that it’s a truism that people vote on perceived tribal affiliation. FOX/GOP has done a brilliant job of building a tribal identity. I would call them “the Gullible”. They would call themselves “Real Americans”. A pretty good brand identity. Dems, partly because they represent a big tent, partly because they have no equivalent of FOX, partly because they don’t have anything like the “Kochtopus” infrastructure the GOPs have, partly because of an election to election planning horizon, have let FOX/GOP define them. Example, I don’t live in a swing state, but I read swing states were inundated with last minute Musk fueled ads about Harris being a child mutilating socialist. And your description is just about how people see what was once the proud middle/working class party of Roosevelt.
@gVOR10:
Repeated for emphasis. “Oligarchs with a populist facade has been the GOP brand since at least Reagan. The historical challenge has been that even though you only need the populist voters when its time for an election, it is important to maintain the facade between elections so it remains feasible to corral them when the time comes.
But, Trump has demonstrated a different path. If you are as shameless and mendacious as Trump is, then as long as you are relentless with the Us versus Them rhetoric through it all, you can spin the mob up again pretty easily with manufactured threats and the promise of simple solutions. Attracting just enough of the inattentive voters to follow the mob is then the ballgame and that’s where the oligarchs jump in with their money.
I think that what will be different this time is, as @Kathy notes, Trump doesn’t need the base anymore. He’s got his Get-out-of-Jail card, so he’s going to escape accountability for his corruption until his death whether he runs again or not. The media oligarchs will give Trump all the attention he craves, while the dark money folks will ensure he never sees financial hardship no matter how many civil penalties ultimately come his way.
And the oligarchs have come to believe they don’t need Trump anymore, because they’ve learned that GOP congresspeople are so afraid of their voters they are easily cowed and Murdoch, Musk, et al, own the propaganda outlets hence control of the base.
So, Musk isn’t going to “stay behind the green curtain.’’ He’s been empowered and he’s going to enshittify the US just as completely as he enshittifed Twitter.
The real risk is getting fired. They have an extremely limited time to find another job or they are out of the country. This heavily skews the employer-employee relationship.
Transferring the H-1B is non-trivial, and not all companies can/will do it.
The vast majority are also applying for green cards and permanent residence. This can very easily get screwed up. (I was not paying attention when one of my Indian coworkers was explaining it)
Wages are also less than the actual prevailing industry wage. Because they have less power in negotiating pay, don’t ask for raises, etc. So “paid handsomely” is only accurate if you are comparing them to McDonald’s workers and teachers, rather than people with similar skill sets.
Indentured servant is an overstatement, but CATO’s notion that things are peachy keen is absurd.
And this is just for software engineers, which I know a lot about. Tech is 65% of H-1B workers, but that broad category includes a lot more than software engineers.
The idea that H-1B workers are all well-paid software engineers working for Google and Amazon who are desperately looking for talent anywhere is carefully crafted propaganda.
There are some of those. There are also a lot of companies that are “consultant” companies, that have a fleet of rent-a-coders, where the company pays far, far below industry standard, and which mostly either lie to workers in India, or grab existing H-1B workers in the US when there are layoffs, and get them in contracts where if they leave they have to “pay back training costs” despite no training being given, or “pay back” the cost of their HR department processing the H-1B at a massively inflated cost.
It’s a system filled with abuse — even at the “good” employers. Indentured servant is an exaggeration, but a much more apt starting point for understanding it than most people are comfortable admitting.
@Jim Brown 32 & @gVOR10:
I would contend that it is misguided to assess the situation with the emphasis on the perceived fecklessness of Democrats – “who can’t defend themselves outside of MSNBC, CNN, Mother Jones, The Root, and Pod Save America” – rather than focusing on the several forces (some of which gVOR10 enumerates) that the Republicans have working to their advantage.
I’m not saying that the Dems lack agency, so beat up the hippies for their poor messaging or identity politics if you want. (BTW, I call “identity politics” defending beleaguered minorities in the Blue Coalition but I understand others see it differently.) But, electoral success will only come when the Democrats stop their navel-gazing and start to develop real countermeasures to Fox/Twitter, the “Kochtopus” infrastructure, dark money, the EC system/gerrymandering that makes the vast majority of contests non-competitive and anti-majoritarian, etc.
@Michael Reynolds:
Respectfully, I disagree on this point.
I think that the Democrats were more fractured before the loss. Now, while there is a lot of understandable hand-wringing, there is a general consensus of: Well, they got what they wanted, maybe there will be enough left of Democracy to reconstruct America after the MAGA fracture into nothing following the recognition that Trump never planned to deliver anything he promised to them.
Given the opportunity, Democrats would THIS time (2026+) vote for a stick of wood, if that was the only choice, and do so with aplomb. Truely the new dead dog democrats for the new century.
For this, I am optimistic, but as I’ve said before I’m ensuring that I have an exit strategy as well, because Oligarchy could tip the scales.
Given the chance to return to power, Job 1 for Democrats is to pass a bill to wipe out the Citizens United decision.
@Stormy Dragon:
Is there such a thing as too much schadenfreude? Have there been published studies on this?
In a linguistically related matter, it has come to light recently that Elon is an ardent supporter of the far right German Party, AfD.
Maybe Elon is finding that his $270 million investment in Trump is somewhat similar to his $40 billion investment in Twitter?
@gVOR10: “I’ve always wondered if the base would ever figure out they’re being served Culture War theatre in lieu of any tangible economic benefit. ”
It’s worked for white people being fed low wages in shithole states while being distracted by Jim Crow.
@wr: Trump is Vince McMahon not one of the performers. What he learned from WWE is that these type of people like rivalry. It doesn’t make them tune in less—they tune in more. The performers are not dumb enough to damage WWE for, say, a rival league. If they did—it would get them thrown off the island.
While this type of thing damages Democrats, their audience (and Dem power brokers) mostly do not like public intertribal confrontation. It is a mistake to interpret this a a negative for MAGA camp. Come 20 Jan—they will be still be sniping at each other—but still united around eradicating Democrats and their policy ideals.
If Dems had the ability to stoke fissures at the MAGA and Tech Bro Base level—there are good targets to exploit—but they can’t message a target audience beyond people that watch MSNBC/CNN/and a few other Podcasts no one cares about.
@Jim Brown 32:
We don’t need to win over those voters, though. We need to motivate our own people. To do that, the Democratic Party needs to get a lot tougher — especially on positioning itself against Trump’s government of greedy oligarchs.
That is the change Democrats need to make and appear to be making, contradicting the repeated strawman argument falsely claiming Democrats don’t believe an election disappointment requires changes. The surrender caucus cowards pushing this falsehood actually don’t have a workable blueprint themselves –hence why they default to lazy, outdated, detail-free platitudes about “identity politics” and “messaging.”
Trump won the voters you speak of by playing identity politics — bashing and scapegoating trans people and migrants. No, Democrats should not adopt that messages in a futile attempt to peel away these gullibles. One, it’s morally wrong. Two, the attempt will just make Democrats look even more weak and effete.
Trans people aren’t price gouging us and paying us slave wages. Poor migrant mothers aren’t denying our healthcare claims. Democrats need declare war on those who are — the mercenary billionaires, rapists, addicts, and corporate raiders who fund and control Trump.
@DK:
So, on the one hand you’re throwing shade my way claiming people like me are reduced to vague talk of messaging, and then you say exactly what I’ve said, that the oligarchs are a fantastic target of opportunity and counsel vague ‘toughness’.
That’s the attack, the stick, what’s the carrot? Where do we propose to take the country? We already did ‘orange man bad,’ and it didn’t work. You think we need to get tougher? Tougher than likening Trump to Hitler?
An attack needs to be followed with a vision of a better future. Oligarchs bad and. . .? Even Trump may not be able to fuck up the economy Biden is handing him. If the economy tanks, we run on that, but we should have something more loaded up. Americans DGAF about foreign policy unless it involves American boots on someone else’s ground, so that’s not it. If the economy remains strong, what’s our pitch? I don’t have an answer, and neither do you, nor does anyone else I’ve seen.
Right now we are leaving the initiative to Trump. If he fucks up badly enough, OK, that’s easy, that’s a ‘failed policies of the past’ line. But if the economy stays strong? We need a unifying vision. It’s not a good idea to remain reactive.
@Gustopher:
Which is the usual go to comparison in the “no wage suppression here, move on” argument. Otherwise, what you described above were my usual “free to look for a new job” experiences in Korea as a foreign education worker. But yeah, being a uni “professor” was a better gig than hagwon teacher, foreign factory worker, or farmer’s wife, the three remaining H-1b equivalent visa categories in Korea.
@DK: Well I would agree, Democrats also have their flavor of average IQ and occasionally motivated voter. The problem is these voters are not energized by the tired story of Democrats and the Federal Gov’t enacting “Y” policy and America lives happily ever after. That is the New Deal story of the mid-20th Century. Narrated by FDR—it was, magnificent, fresh, and novel for its time. Its subsequent remixes did ok and were critical successes, but were box office failures compared to the original. The latest remake, created by Biden-Harris productions, was vastly superior to the remakes (some even argued it surpassed the original) but the reduced number of theaters that carried it and limited Ad buys—amongst other factors, made it a flop at the ticket counter.
It must be noted that the original “New Deal” genre was somewhat of an anomaly in America theater appetites—characterized by love of good old fashioned “whodunnits”—always a reliable draw to American Theaters. In 2024, while New Deal 3.0 was getting trounced at the ticket box, “Orange Poo (I had corn for dinner)” enjoyed a resurgence over its original debut, fit with predictable villains that bring in a good amount of occasional (and mindless) moviegoers.
There is talk at Democratic Studios about production of a whodunnit blockbuster— but finding writers who can create a whodunnit that appeals to the consumers of the New Deal series AND brings in a good amount of occasional (and mindless) moviegoers will prove to be a challenge to Studio executives entering a new genre. Of course, being masters of the New Deal genre, there is also a faction at Democratic Studios that believes New Deal 3.1 will be the charm, if properly calibrated to modern tastes—time will tell which faction and genre Democratic Studios will turn to for competing with “Orange Poo (I had creamed corn for dinner)”
@Michael Reynolds: The Republican story machine made stories in the midst of one of the greatest economies ever. Price of Eggs (loudspeaker), price of gas (loudspeaker), stupid bureaucracy rules (loudspeaker). It doesn’t matter about the economy—the story is “You could have X—but Y is in the way” OR “Y is playing you for a fool right in your face”. There are a host of lowlifes in Trump’s orbit that can play into those stories lines. My handyman should know about Jared Kushner’s 2 billion loan from the Saudis and the $500 a night Trump is going to charge the Secret Service for $200 rooms. The Federal Gov’t is going to do something dumb after 20 January. It should be on loudspeaker. One of the things the pandemic showed is that if Trump has to spend a lot of time under exposure as President—he’ll break down. He can only fake President a couple of hours a day. (Which is how I know he absolutely does not want a War with anyone)
Put it ALL on loudspeaker*—and if he doesn’t show—put “who’s running the country? WTF is the President?” on loudspeaker. DO NOT ALLOW HIM TO HIDE and play part-time reality show President.
*disclamer—this assumes Democrats can build a loudspeaker.
@Jim Brown 32:
Were not energized this year, for the incumbent party amid a global anti-incumbent shift. Democrats won in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
I don’t get why some respond to each election by acting like its results represent permanence. We know better: sooner or later, Americans tire of the government they choose in any given year and turn towards the opposition.
Of course political parties have to make changes, because the world is always changing. Duh. But I don’t buy the idea Democrats need to burn the whole house down to find some super special whole new star acting out a super special whole new script, or else Republicans — in disarray and already divided, chaotic, and unable to get their crap together — are going to win every election that ever happens again from now until forever. Enough with the cheap melodrama.
Trump’s unprecedented wannabe-fascism is a wild card. But if MAGA fails at its scheme to end future elections (and they don’t seem to have the discipline, unity or intelligence) Democrats win will some. So will Republicans. Voters need to know that when Dems win, our dangerous and predatory billionaire class will be under fire — not trans people.
Like you say, it’s not enough for Dems to just deliver for the working in middle classes. Americans want somebody to blame. Democrats need to blame those actually harming us all: selfish, greedy, corporatist cannibals like Elon Musk and Vivek Whatshisname. If the losers must have a scapegoat, it should at least be the right one.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’d go with Oligarchs bad and Freedom good. I think Walz’ “mind your own damn business” was a good All American framing for the defense of trans people and immigrants. I’m going to argue for being relentless on a winning message (that lost by small margins against a global anti-incumbent wave) rather than an overhaul.
If @Jim Brown 32 is right and “Democrats and the Federal Gov’t enacting “Y” policy” is played out as a Democratic narrative (and I believe he is), then “leave me the hell alone” could be the new story. The MAGA coalition offers a good foil for that narrative if you ask me. The Christianists want to intrude in our bedrooms and bathrooms, the racist/xenophobic base wants to decide who the Real Americans are, and the oligarchs want to push us toward austerity measures while they leverage state power for themselves.
But, I would just restate that any change in messaging from the Dems has to be joined with countermeasures to structural disadvantages in our current political environment. Without an answer to Fox/Twitter’s cornering the propaganda market, without an education campaign on the dysfunction of the EC, without some measure of campaign finance reform, no amount of storytelling will tip the balance.
Oof… The shoe just dropped:
Trump sided with Musk on H1-B visas issue, saying he has “a lot of them on his properties”.
What a dehumanizing way to say that… and what a slap in the face of the MAGA.
Of course, the MAGA isn’t going to drop $250 mil on him, nor will they trim the hedges without complaining. So there’s that.
@Michael Reynolds: “I don’t think this will destroy Trump or anything so dramatic.”
Yeah, I know. As deeply satisfying as the end of “A Face in the Crowd” is, in real life Lonesome Rhodes would just explain to his listeners that he was parodying the way the elites talk about them, and they’d all rally back to his side rather than entertain for a second the idea that they were wrong about their cult leader.
@Michael Reynolds: “Over this next 2 year cycle we need to work to avoid a complete fragmentation.”
It’s a whole lot easier to keep a coalition together in opposition than it is once you regain power. Right now, everyone shares a goal — defeat MAGA.
Just as it was easy for everyone on the right to rally around to defeat Evil Joe. Now that they can start divvying up the spoils, they’re going to be turning on each other.
But this would be a good time to start building a new Democratic coalition while everyone is on pretty much the same page…
@Liberal Capitalist:
Trump To MAGAs: “Go F*ck Yourself In The Face!”
I’m betting they will.
@Jim Brown 32: “Trump is Vince McMahon not one of the performers”
Sure. But I’m pretty certain that Elon Musk doesn’t consider himself one of the performers, either, and I have a feeling he’s not going to like being treated like one. He didn’t back Trump for entertainment, he backed him so that his companies could do whatever they wanted without any interference.
H-1B visas.
According to the NYPost, Trump has sided with Musk over H-1B visas.
@wr: I would argue that Musk is already playing a caricature of himself to secure his real aims. The guy has a couple of things he wants for his businesses and the rest is performative, a role chosen based on societal winds. Anyone with significant access to the backside of the socials has a pretty good idea which way the winds are blowing in society.
The current generation of oligarchs have learn to cultivate an image that most engaged of the mob identify with. It’s better for business than opposing them. And behind the curtain, you can still take everything you want to keep the mob in their place. The easier way to control a mob, is to lead it.
James: “The notion that these immigrants are indentured servants is absurd. They’re paid handsomely and, while it’s harder for them to switch jobs than it is for American citizens, they nonetheless do so routinely. Indeed, as a recent CATO report notes, ”
Mistermix at Balloon-Juice: (https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/28/h-1b/) https://balloon-juice.com/2024/12/28/h-1b/“”In my experience, the overhead associated with having H-1B visa holders is way too expensive for small companies to shoulder. So, it’s a big tech company program, allowing them to have a set of lower-paid immigrant engineers. Then, there’s the issue with the length of the H-1B, which is nominally 6 years, and while visa holders can apply for permanent residency, that’s by no means guaranteed. Finally, the H-1B holder has to exit the US in 60 days or less if they’re laid off or fired. Put all of these requirements together, and H-1B holders are essentially indentured to the corporation that hired them initially.”
Well, it’s happening ever sooner than I expected.
I at least thought the intra-MAGA civil wars would wait till after the inauguration.
Pass the popcorn, please.
As I think I’ve said before: there is a massive ideological and political disjunction between MAGA-populists, and “tech-bro” anarcho-capitalist types.
Due to their very obviously different economic interests, and their base assumptions about desirable governance.
The “old Republican” party of c. 1918 to 2016 generally managed to paper over those cracks.
Trump is bringing the contradictions of conservatism into the open.
Largely because he’s an idiot, who’s trying to ride several different tigers at the same time.
The obvious response of a sensible democratic left is to be sensible.
A stance based not on utopianism, or on infinitely divisible factions of actual or perceived grievance, but on pragmatic policies for the common good.
Obviously, it gets rather messy from that point on.
But such is politics, as opposed to silly millennialarism.
@Jim Brown 32:
This is an indicator that Musk will lose the battle for supremacy in the contest of courtiers for influence. Asperger’s is disabling condition for politicians. Musk (and his sidekick Ramy) seem to have no sense of how normal people will respond to things, so they are likely continue to make similar stupid mistakes.
@JohnSF:
Back in 2016, Trump ranted to Megyn Kelly about how appalling the H-1B visa program was, and how he’d abolish it. Now he loves it.
@DK:
I saw this phenomenon at work in Korea. I had an evening free conversation group (pretty much near native level speakers) composed of professionals and civil service/military. I asked if they were willing to talk about the coming election.
The consensus was that Koreans knew that Lee Myung-bak was corrupt but didn’t care because they were tired of liberal-party government. Maybe the MAGAts use the same process (though, yeah some are that dumb, too). And there are the “vote red no matter what”s still in play.
@Liberal Capitalist: @CSK: And y’all are surprised because…? Trump has always been the same on H-1B visas. He as much as admitted that he preferred hiring European grunt labor on H-1Bs for his hotels and golf courses back during his first term. And the MAGAts got him not wanting to hire [racial epithets, deleted] just fine.
ETA: In 2016 Trump was still running for office on “Murka First.” What he said to Megan Kelly was just “the weave.”
@just nutha:
Recalls being in Italy, before the 5* did well in 2018:
me: “You’re going to vote for Five Star? But you just said they were fools?”
them: “Yes, but at least it kicks the Democratic Party!”
me: *sigh*
The politics of “the grump” are imuho the best argument against modern democracy.
🙁
I would very much like to see someone youngish declare for the presidency basically right after the inauguration and then use the platform to be everywhere in media criticizing the administration and highlighting the grift and corruption. Buttigieg would be great at this since he handles Fox so well (I’m not endorsing him or anything, he just comes to mind as an effective communicator). Democrats can’t wait until the start of the “normal” campaign cycle to start hammering these points
@Erik: The Democrat with the right political instincts for this moment will see MAGA’s intracrazy spat and start calling for an audit of the H-1B visa program, saying we need to ensure those visas actually go to highly-skilled immigrants only — while attacking Trump, Musk, Vivek, and their rich friends for abusing the program to exploit cheap migrant labor and to undercut well-educated American employees.
By contrast, Gavin Newsom is already praising Trump for agreeing with Musk. So scratch him off the list.
@DK: I really don’t have anyone on my list, but Newsom would definitely not have been on it. Although I think someone who could capitalize on the attention would be an automatic front runner, the most important thing is to have someone who can attract attention every time they open their mouth, not necessarily someone who I’d be excited to vote for. They wouldn’t need to have much of a platform since the goal would be to keep attention on the corruption and incompetence. It would need to be someone who can be ubiquitous in media, old and new, so preferably someone with some name recognition. Someone that will just keep hammering the corrupt and incompetent message, only reacting to the daily outrage to use it as the latest example of the basic message of corruption and incompetence. Highlight the pattern of misconduct, not the individual actions so people don’t jump from outrage to outrage and forget the previous 100’s of them. That message needs to get repeated so often in so many places that it is hard to miss or dismiss even by low info voters
James: “The whole thing struck me as weird but not enough to write about. Loomer is obviously a racist loon. It did, however, spark a social media debate over our immigration policy.”
My bet is Loomer fades, but remember that the GOP relies heavily on racist loons.
@Jim Brown 32: “I would argue that Musk is already playing a caricature of himself to secure his real aims. ”
That may be. Or he may be exactly the person he’s currently presenting himself as. I don’t see much reason to argue over this now, as neither of us has any idea which is the truth.
(Unless you actually have had some meaningful and personal Musk contact, in which case I’d love to know more…)
@Barry: There’s always a new racist loon – they are a dime a dozen. For Trump, they are expendible whereas a guy like Elon who can make Trump’s money issues go away – that’s gold baby.