MAGA Civil War: Elon Musk’s Attack on Conservatives Raises Questions

Over the past week, Trump’s billionaire ally and owner of the popular social media platform X (Twitter) Elon Musk has been actively engaged in a feud with MAGA conservatives over his proposition to bring more foreign workers into the country over the U.S. work visa program called H1B that has been bringing foreigners to work in America since 1990.

The disagreement between Musk and MAGA conservatives flared up suddenly when Musk angrily snapped back at Steven Mackey, the Christian conservative commentator who suggested reforming the H1B program. In his reply to Mackey, Musk wrote:

“Take a step back and fuck yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1872860577057448306

As imaginable, all hell broke loose with Musk’s retort. MAGA supporters fired back at Musk and X became a battleground over the H1B visa program. Musk doubled down on his support for the program claiming that it is necessary for making America strong as it brings highly talented people to work toward this goal. MAGA conservatives rejected his claims and countered them with their own that hiring foreign workers is simply a scheme to replace the domestic American workforce. They accused Musk of pushing the H1B program to get cheap labor for his own businesses.

Journalist Merissa Hansen dug into employment records from Musk-owned Tesla for 2022–2023 to show that the company laid off nearly 2700 workers in its Tesla factory in Austin, Texas, immediately after nearly the same number of H1B visas were approved by the government.

https://twitter.com/merissahansen17/status/1873959674678288516

Hansen’s implication that Musk imported H1B workers to replace the existing ones was reflected in another post by conservative commentator Jack Francis of Red Eagle Politics. Francis brought the receipts to show how a big majority of the H1B visas were going to lower paid jobs and not the exceptionally qualified engineers who would draw a 6-figure income. He wrote that the whole system is a scam.

https://twitter.com/RedEaglePatriot/status/1872815473144037570

Many staunch conservatives including Steve Bannon, who literally went to jail for defying the Democrat congress’s sham investigation into January 6, 2021 protest, have been outraged at Musk. What the MAGA base has seen from Musk’s X posts insulting and belittling them can be described as a display of technocratic arrogance from an unelected billionaire whose influence in the upcoming Trump administration is concerning, to say the least.

To make it worse, Musk has targeted his critics on X by removing their verified status, indicated by a blue checkmark, and thus making them lose the revenue they get from sponsors. A key target of Musk, firebrand conservative journalist and activist Laura Loomer, joined Steve Bannon on his show “Bannon’s War Room” to talk about the issue. Loomer, who is Jewish, pointed out that Musk’s model of government is treating the country as a corporation where profit takes precedence over other values.

Loomer named other influential figures, like Peter Theil, who have secured deep influence in the American politics as their like-minded ideologues surround Trump. The result is potentially reducing America to a business.

Other conservatives can relate to Loomer’s case against Musk’s vision for America as they hold American traditions and values close to their hearts and at the core of it all lies the America First mission, not just financially but demographically and culturally. A rich country is not necessarily the ideal place to live for people who have Christian values of the West. Oil-rich Islamic countries in the Middle East are an example. Not many Americans would like to live there or even work there for a long time because of the big cultural differences and civil rights issues.

For the MAGA base, the political standing of Ramaswamy and Musk also remains a big question mark. On November 5, pro-America conservatives went to cast ballots for Trump and Vance. But did they unofficially elect Musk and Ramaswamy? In the coming weeks, this question is likely to pop up in the legal immigration debate and it will be left to Trump to prove to his base that he is not selling out the MAGA workers to the business-centered plans of his tech billionaire circle.