Maga vs. Musk: Trump camp divided in bitter dispute over immigration policy | Donald Trump

A bitter power struggle has broken out between tech billionaire Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s hardline Make America great again (MAGA) base after the US president-elect appointed an Indian-born entrepreneur as his artificial intelligence adviser.

The dispute pitted Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy against die-hard supporters including far-right activist Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the former congressman and failed candidate for attorney general. The dispute threatens to open a rift among Trump’s supporters over immigration, a key issue in his election victory.

In a harbinger of a so-called “MAGA civil war,” Musk went on the offensive after Loomer attacked the choice of Sriram Krishnan, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, as the new administration’s AI policy adviser as “deeply troubling.”

Loomer, a well-known anti-immigrant provocateur widely known for convincing Trump to bring to light false rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in the presidential debate with Kamala Harris last September, criticized Krishnan in the social media for supporting the extension of visas and green cards for skilled workers. She said it was in “direct contradiction” to Trump’s agenda.

Her comments provoked a backlash from Musk, the Space X and Tesla billionaire who is Trump’s most influential supporter and himself an immigrant from South Africa.

“There is a permanent shortage of outstanding engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk posted on Christmas Day on X, the social media platform he owns.

In a later post, he wrote, “It comes down to this: Do you want America to WIN, or do you want America to LOSE?” If you force the best talent in the world to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story.”

Musk’s stance was supported by Ramaswamy, his partner in the fledgling Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), an informal agency Trump is said to be setting up, in which the two men will be tasked with cutting government spending.

In a lengthy social media post, Ramaswamy — the son of immigrants from India — argued that the U.S. is doomed to decline without highly skilled foreign workers and suggested that American culture is focused on “mediocrity.”

“The reason top technology companies often hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers instead of ‘American’ Native Americans is not because of an innate American IQ deficit,” he wrote.

“A significant part of it depends on the C word: culture.

“For far too long, our American culture has revered mediocrity over excellence. This doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympian or the athlete over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers. “Normal” is not enough in a highly competitive global market for technical talent. And if we do that, we’ll get kicked in the ass by China.”

The arguments were met with strong backlash from MAGA representatives, led by Loomer, who was heavily involved in racist arguments.

“@VivekGRamaswamy knows the Great Replacement is real,” she wrote. “It is not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies that I voted for. I voted to reduce H1B visas. No extension.

“The tech billionaires can’t just walk into Mar-a-Lago, wipe out their massive checkbooks, and rewrite our immigration policies so they can have unlimited slave laborers from India and China who never assimilate.

“They don’t even know what MAGA’s immigration policy is.”

Ramaswamy’s argument also came under fire from pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley, who posted: “I always love it when these tech bros flat out tell you they have no understanding of American culture and then have the audacity to do so “To tell you that YOU are the problem with America.”

And even Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential candidate and Trump critic whose parents were also Indian immigrants, posted: “There’s nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.” You just have to look at the border and see how many want that , what we have. We should invest in and prioritize Americans, not foreign workers.”

The arguments appeared to point to a battle for the favor of Trump, who based his political appeal on an anti-immigration message and who during his first presidency restricted access to H-1B visas, saying they were vulnerable to abuse.

But in his recent presidential campaign, the president-elect appeared open to legal immigration for educated workers and said he wanted to grant permanent residency status to foreigners who graduate from college in the United States.

“If you graduate or get your doctorate from a university, you should be able to stay in this country,” he told the All In podcast last June.

Samuel Hammond, a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, said the dispute shows the likelihood of future conflict within the Trump administration. “It’s a sign of future conflict,” he told The Washington Post. “It’s like foreplay.”