From this morning’s Politico Playbook:
| If the press, to borrow Salena Zito’s memorable turn of phrase, takes President-elect DONALD TRUMP “literally, but not seriously,” and his supporters “take him seriously, but not literally,” this week offered fresh signs that some of his most high-profile supporters from Silicon Valley take him neither seriously nor literally on one of the central issues of his campaign. A fight over immigration has erupted among Trump’s supporters, revealing hairline fractures in his political coalition that have the potential to rapidly grow into something more untenable.
Also guaranteeing that it won’t be ignored: Musk’s frenetic activity on X, where he seems to leap into tempestuous debates without consideration of the political ramifications. The brawl built to a boil this week, as Brendan Bordelon reports: “The president-elect’s Sunday naming of SRIRAM KRISHNAN, a former partner at venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, to serve as his artificial intelligence adviser caused panic among Trump’s base, with many fretting over his recent advocacy for removing country caps on green cards for high-skilled workers.” Musk and other members of the Silicon Valley elite, in turn defended Krishnan and mounted a vigorous defense of foreign labor, at least its tippy-top echelon: “It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE,” Musk posted on Christmas. “If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story.” |
Musk’s argument did not exactly win over MAGA.
Joining Musk in pushing back? His DOGE partner, VIVEK RAMASWAMY, who blamed an “American culture [that] has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he wrote in a long missive. “A culture that venerates CORY from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or ZACH & SLATER over SCREECH in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘STEFAN’ over STEVE URKEL in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers. … More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of ‘Friends.’” Setting aside the outdated TGIF references and bizarre interpretation of “Whiplash,” this explanation didn’t play well with some in the MAGA camp: “Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B’s,” Cernovich replied. “Then why did everyone want to come here?” It would be tempting here to say that the whole episode shines a spotlight on the tightrope walk ahead of Trump. There’s something to that, but here’s what we’re wondering this morning: Who should be more worried about this: Trump or Musk? Musk’s prominence and influence in Trump world have made him a target from within. He inspires nothing of the sort of loyalty from MAGA voters that Trump enjoys, and it’s not hard to imagine the tide turning against him, especially as he so eagerly walks into political trip wires. One final example of that from last night was his response to a popular conservative pro-Musk account on X. “So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right,” Autism Capital wrote. “[A]nd the tech right is like ‘hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs,’ and the right right was like ‘no you need to hire americans,’ and the tech right is like ‘but you guys are [an offensive term for people with developmental disabilities],’ and the right right is like ‘well you don’t train us,’ and the tech right is like ‘you can’t outtrain being [offensive term],’ and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don’t like Indians.” “That pretty much sums it up,” Musk replied. “This was eye-opening.” |
