Tesla CEO Elon Musk may have financed an anti-immigrant, ‘America First’ presidential campaign to the tune of $250 million, but his call for more skilled foreign-born workers sparked massive backlash from President-elect Donald Trump's far-right supporters.
Musk on Wednesday asserted that there was a “dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America” and called for increased visa availability, drawing scorn from many of Trump’s followers and close allies.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a momentary pick for Trump’s attorney general, criticized Musk’s influence in the White House and H-1B Visa stance in a post to X on Thursday.
“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way,” Gaetz wrote. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”
Ex-presidential candidate Nikki Haley, herself the daughter of Indian immigrants, argued against Musk and “DOGE” duo partner Vivek Ramaswamy’s suggestion that immigrant workers had unique talent or work ethic.
“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” she wrote in a Thursday post. “We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”
Some went further than criticizing Musk’s stance, instead questioning the X owner’s role in the incoming White House entirely.
Laura Loomer, a self-described “pro-white nationalist,” rejected Musk’s closeness to Trump, forecasting consequences for the billionaire for the remark and an end to the Big Tech-MAGA honeymoon.
“[Elon Musk], who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total f****g drag on the Trump transition,” Loomer tweeted. “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.”
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Musk dismissed Loomer’s comments, accusing the Trump ally of “trolling for attention” in a Thursday post to X. Meanwhile, Loomer accused Musk of throttling her X profile, removing paid subscriptions and account verification.
“Pure censorship. MAGA has been silenced,” Loomer alleged in a post to the platform, later alleging “Big Tech has infiltrated MAGA.”
High-profile X users amplified Loomer's accusations of censorship, including massive anti-trans account Libs of Tiktok, who asked Friday on the platform why “so many accounts [are] suddenly losing their blue checks and subscribers.”
Ultimately, the far-right influencer predicted that a “divorce is coming soon” between Trump and Musk, a possibility that some in the big tech sphere believe in, too. Samuel Hammond, an economist at the anti-regulation Foundation for American Innovation, told the Washington Post that the spar was “a sign of future conflicts.”
The showdown comes just days after the president-elect had to reassure supporters that he, not Musk, was running the show.
“He’s not gonna be president,” Trump said on Sunday, referring to the ‘President Musk’ monicker that some gave to the billionaire after he successfully tanked two federal budget bills. “I’m safe. You know why? He can’t be. He wasn’t born in this country.”
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