Musk vs. MAGA
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Just a quick heads up, there is some swearing in this episode. Okay, here's the show. Over the Christmas holiday, right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer was busy tweeting. It started with essentially Laura Loomer's aggression towards this nomination for an AI policy advisory job by the incoming Trump administration of this guy, Sriram Krishnan. That's Ryan Mack, who covers tech for The New York Times.

Sriram Krishnan is a venture capitalist. He's worked at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter. And Ryan says he's pretty close to David Sachs and Elon Musk. He was also born in India, which is where Laura Loomer comes in. And she starts to raise her concerns that he is someone who was born in India, who has supported the use of H-1B visas.

and pushed this idea that he was hoping to raise the cap of H-1Bs. So this idea of, you know, increasing the number of H-1B visas to the U.S. Which, to be clear, is not something he's talked about. H-1B visas are sometimes known as skilled worker visas. We will get deep into them soon. Suffice to say, Laura Loomer was mad online. And she compared tech billionaires, hint hint Elon Musk, to a termite infestation.

This is the narrative that set in among her supporters and really drove weeks-long conversation about H-1Bs that has split the MAGA party. I want to dig deeper into H-1Bs, but I think we also got to acknowledge the Elon Musk Tropic Thunder meme tweet, which, among other things...

says, the reason I'm in America with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B. Take a big step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. I'm quoting. I'm just quoting from the movie, which he was doing too.

But man, what like what does that say to you as someone who's followed Elon for a long time? I mean, with Elon, you have to know that he likes to exaggerate. He likes to go also from zero to 100 very quickly. And he loves to project this very strongman image of himself. He often says stuff like, you know, I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. You know, it's just what he does online. And he loves to talk shit. And in this case, he did that and spent a lot of the Christmas holiday doing that by himself online.

It's something he feels very strongly about as well. I mean, his companies rely on H1Bs from Tesla to X. He himself is an immigrant from South Africa. But it is really kind of the first, I guess, schism we've seen in the MAGA party or in the Republican Party because of this image that he's projected throughout the election that he is anti-immigration. Well, actually, in fact, he wants immigration. He just wants it to be, quote unquote, legal immigration.

Today on the show, how a visa program and a lot of angry tweets exposed the cracks in the MAGA alliance. I'm Lizzie O'Leary, and you're listening to What Next TBD, a show about technology, power, and how the future will be determined. Stick around. This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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H-1B visas are the main way that U.S. companies hire high-skilled foreign workers. The visa category was created under the Immigration Act of 1990. The visas aren't permanent, and since 2005, they've been capped at $65,000 a year, plus an extra $20,000 for foreigners with a graduate degree from a U.S. school.

Most workers who hold an H-1B have a bachelor's degree or the equivalent and often work in specialized fields like high tech, which is why they are so popular in Silicon Valley. If you think about how these companies were built, a lot of kind of these technical expertise and engineers came from overseas. I think of places like Google, Apple.

Apple relies on them even tracing back to the early days of the valley some founders like places Sun Microsystems have had immigrant founders Elon himself has said he was on an h-1b. He entered the country on a student visa eventually, he said he obtained an h-1b and that's what enabled him to work in this country, I guess when he was an early Engineer and founder these days a company like Tesla. I believe is

It uses more than 700 H-1Bs is what the last count was last year. You know, Tesla has tens of thousands of employees, but around 700, 800, that's a pretty significant chunk of your workforce. And those are typically high skilled jobs at those companies, engineering jobs. So they play a significant role in terms of supplementing the workforce at places like Tesla, Apple, Google, Meta, you name it.

I mean, it sounds like from what you're saying that these companies just absolutely could not operate the way they do without having some employees on these visas. I think it'd be very difficult for them to, for sure. I don't know if impossible, but yeah, these companies do rely on them to a large extent. I think of something like X or Twitter, for example, for

which we wrote in our book, you know, when he was firing or laying off a lot of folks at Twitter two years ago, a lot of the folks that ended up staying or committing to stay at Twitter were folks on visas because their place in the country was limited.

dependent on their work status, on their employment. And so they either had the option of quitting en masse, like a lot of their colleagues who were citizens, or they could stay and, you know, work through this trying time, but also be able to stay in the country. What I personally have found so interesting here is trying to parse out what in this

Online Fight is about immigration, people writ large coming into the United States, and what is about who might come into the United States. Because there are these different threads of racism, xenophobia, and then the, oh, well, a skilled immigrant is somehow different part of it. And that's where...

There's so much conflict between these groups, and I don't know how to pull that apart exactly. I would start with what Elon has said to defend his position. He doesn't say he's racist, but he's saying that we want to welcome the best talents from around the world to the U.S. He compares it to the NBA draft. He says, we want the Wembes...

and the Steph Currys of the world to come to the U.S. and work for our companies and, you know, expand our ability to build great companies, you know, because his companies rely on those types of people. And these are the immigrants we want because those are the immigrants that live the American dream. They improve our country.

But oh, by the way, those people that are crossing the border, seeking a better life or seeking asylum, those are not the best. Those, in fact, let me play up the worst stereotypes about those people. Those are the people that are replacing you at the southern border. So he's played both sides of this immigration issue. And he's defined one as legal immigration and the other as illegal. And that's his position, right? Right. Seeking asylum is legal, to be clear. Yes. On the other side of things, you have...

Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, people that don't want any immigration at all. Any non-white person coming into the U.S. is bad. We need to protect American culture, American white culture, essentially white nationalism. And so that is, I guess, the divergence between the two. And there are racist aspects to all of it, some more than others. And it's interesting watching this play out because you have

People on the tech billionaires, on the Musk, Sachs, David Sachs side, who have said, you know, these attacks against this nominee, Sri Ramakrishna, have verged into racism. Like, where is this coming from? I can't believe, you know, these racist attacks on the Republican Party. One of the criticisms that Laura Loomer, but then also some perhaps less completely incendiary people, have lobbed at

The H-1B visa program, they like to liken it to indentured servitude. A very strong term, but saying like, look, you have leverage over these employees in a way that you would not over someone else who was a citizen.

It's very interesting watching the political battle lines be drawn over this topic. You have someone like Laura Loomer who comes from it from a completely anti-immigrant position, like no immigration whatsoever. I think, you know, you could characterize people like Nick Fuentes in that camp, who is a white nationalist.

But on the complete other side of the spectrum, progressives and liberals, they feel like the H-1B visa program is abused. And it causes, again, this idea of indentured servitude or people tying their place in this country to their employment. And if you don't have that job, you essentially get kicked out within a couple months of

Or the idea that it depresses wages for your American worker. But yeah, it's not a clear left-right issue here. And I think that's what makes it so interesting. And then you obviously see this split among Republicans. You know, you have these tech billionaires like David Sachs and Elon Musk who are very influential in the Trump camp right now who have taken this position on quote-unquote legal immigration.

And you have people like Loomer and Fuentes who have said, you know, this is why Trump has betrayed our trust and MAGAism as a whole, because he's letting in these immigrant workers to take American jobs. Then there's also the addition of Vivek Ramaswamy, who has also been pro-H-1B visa, doing a lot of tweeting of his own. And I think one of the things that is so fascinating here is,

is watching the different vectors of power that the people surrounding the incoming president have, how much they have and how it waxes and wanes. And as you have reported on Elon Musk and the people close to him, do you think this situation threatens his power at all? Or does it seem like it's just strengthening it? I mean, I think heading into the election,

Trump's Republican base was very unified. You didn't hear these calls to examine tech billionaires oligopoly, or Elon Musk's power in the way that you know, that termite tweet that you read about from from Laura Loomer. But now you're starting to see people have this kind of awakening, I guess, which is

what the Democrats and folks that have been critical of Elon Musk's influence have warned about since he wrote his first check to Donald Trump, since he stepped on stage with him in Pennsylvania, that you have the world's richest man whispering into the air of the president-elect and essentially potentially controlling policy, being able to shift laws or regulations in favor of his companies potentially, his various conflicts of interest.

And now you get Laura Loomer making those same points. And, you know, it's, I've seen a lot of folks on the left tweet the click hole meme of like the worst person in the world makes the point you want to make. Yeah, makes a good point. Yeah, and it's like, a lot of people are having that feeling. And I think Elon sees that. I mean, he's someone that reads all of his online criticism. He is someone in his history who like, you know, when he's running Tesla would read a

obscure Belgian blog criticizing one of his cars at 3am and force his PR people to like wage war against this person. He is that same person to this day. And so he's definitely reading all that criticism. He's seeing all that. And I think it hurts him, but it also threatens him. And he's internalizing that.

I'm just surprised at how this whole thing has continued. Like it's been, what, a week and a half and we're still talking about it. And again, these battle lines that are being drawn over this are really interesting. People are calling it a civil war, for example. And it's not a pretty sight to see if you're a Republican Party member. When we come back, will big tech keep kissing the MAGA ring if they feel threatened? This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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When I look at how this might be read in terms of future power and policy battles, Donald Trump spoke to the New York Post. He said he's, quote, a believer in H-1B. He also seemed to be confusing those visas with some other types of visas. A little bit unclear, but at least for the moment, seemed like he was putting a finger on the Elon side of the scale here.

Yeah. And to get into that confusion real quick, my colleague Ken Bensinger wrote on this. He's used H-2B visas, which I believe are for unskilled immigrant workers. And he's employed those folks at his clubs and his hotels. So he's conflating the two, which is interesting. But I guess the larger message is that he supports immigrant workers and has come in on the side of Elon here and David Sachs and the tech billionaires.

And that has sort of quelled, I guess, the arguments online. Laura Loomer has certainly pulled back her attacks. It certainly speaks to kind of how Trump is able to kind of say whatever and his base will fall in line. But online, at least, I've seen a lot of criticism from someone like Nick Fuentes, for example, who, you know, is a white nationalist, but is still influential among his group, these Groypers, for example, that...

a pretty vicious online and drive conversation. But also, you can't really put that genie back in the bottle. I mean, we've all seen what Laura Loomer has said. You know, she kind of unloaded on Elon, all the ammunition she had with regards to concerns about his wealth and his influence. And so it's now kind of all floating out there. And if you're Elon, I can imagine you're holding a grudge against someone like that.

And if you are on the other side of this, let's say you're Stephen Miller, are you watching those things that Laura Loomer says and thinking, I'm just going to stick these in my pocket and maybe this will be helpful to me when we get into office on January 20th and try to start making different immigration policy? Yeah. And I think that's actually a great point. We haven't even started the presidency, right? This is playing out weeks before he's taken office.

Stephen Miller is an interesting person to look at in all this. He was very quiet on Twitter. He tweeted out a speech, actually, as this was playing out, about it's a speech he had written for Trump about immigration and what makes America great. But it was very cryptic. It didn't really come down on one side or the other. You can bet damn sure that he is paying attention to this and taking notes.

From my understanding, he's quite close with Elon. So, I mean, that's the thing that a lot of these folks in Trump's inner circle know the power that Elon brings. They know like that his money is one of the reasons that put Trump into the White House. So I don't know if they're going to cut the cord immediately, but it's certainly something that they're going to pay attention to for sure.

How did the rest of the tech billionaires, many of whom have pledged sort of public fealty to the Trump administration, or at least, you know,

congratulatory statements, how do they reckon with this? Because obviously they have a lot riding on this as well. But if you're Mark Zuckerberg, if you're Jeff Bezos, are you just keeping your mouth shut and seeing where this goes? Like how comfortable are they with the MAGA policy prescriptions? I think this is very fascinating to understand this from the perspective of another tech CEO, because immigration was kind of

the breaking point for a lot of these companies in 2016. Right. Started walkouts. Yeah, exactly. Walkouts. You have the Muslim ban that goes into place. You have Sergey Brin showing up at SFO Airport to welcome immigrant employees and protest. And there's the Trump Tower meeting where Mark Zuckerberg doesn't even show up to. And these days you have Mark Zuckerberg flying to Mar-a-Lago. You have Meta donating to

the inauguration fund. Amazon's done that as well. Jeff Bezos is flying down to kiss the ring. I think if you're those guys, you have already kind of signaled your fealty to Trump, your willingness to work with his administration. And you're hoping that Elon Musk is in your corner. And it seems like they are. He is in their corner. Obviously, they are all in support of H-1Bs. And I think that's all they can hope for. So...

They've been very quiet through this whole process. I can imagine if it had been 2016 and this H-1B debate had come up, these companies might have issued statements. But these days, they're going to keep their mouth shut. And they have. Because they know they don't want to risk the ire of an incoming president.

President Trump. You know, after Elon took over Twitter, he reinstated, among other people, Laura Loomer and other MAGA figures who had been banned from the platform under the previous ownership. I wonder what he's thinking about that now that these same people are using his own platform to attack him.

I feel like we could have done like a whole episodic pod on this that have lasted for like three hours and gone through multiple years. But if you remember why Laura Loomer got banned, it was for anti-Muslim posts about Ilhan Omar. She was banned by the previous ownership of Twitter, the previous executives. And after she got banned, she chained herself or handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter's headquarters in New York.

She also wore a Jewish star to symbolize her persecution to demand her account back. And Twitter at the time kind of just let her do it. They actually ordered her pizza. And eventually she ended her protests after a couple hours. It was very cold. And she gave up and left. She never got her Twitter account back. Elon Musk, when he bought the company in late 2022, one of his first moves was to reinstate Twitter.

the previously banned folks. You get Alex Jones back, you get Donald Trump back, and you get Laura Loomer back. And so Laura Loomer has sang his praises since that moment. She also let back the likes of Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist who came back and basically started uttering slurs in Twitter spaces or X spaces after that. So he essentially has allowed these people to come back

And now they're using his own platform, you know, his quote unquote free speech platform to criticize him. And I think that's the kind of ultimate irony here is that he has kind of made his own bed. He has given these people back their voice, their Twitter accounts or the X accounts, and they're shredding him for it. Again, over this issue of immigration, which kind of seems to be the thing we come back to over and over again. And it's kind of a full circle moment for him in some ways.

Brian Mack, thank you so much for coming on and for talking with me. Thank you. Brian Mack is a tech reporter for The New York Times. He and fellow Times reporter Kate Conger also wrote the great book Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. In my opinion, it is essential reading to understand the moment we are in today.

And that is it for our show. What Next TBD is produced by Ethan Oberman, Patrick Fort, and Shaina Roth. Our show is edited by Evan Campbell. Alicia Montgomery is vice president of audio for Slate, and TBD is part of the larger What Next family. And if you like what you heard, the number one best way to support us is to join Slate Plus. You get all your Slate podcasts ad-free, including this one. Plus, you won't hit a paywall on the Slate site.

All right. We will be back on Sunday with an episode about how the incoming Trump administration is going bonkers for crypto. I am Lizzie O'Leary. Thanks so much for listening.

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