Is the Trump coalition coming apart before the Trump administration even begins? That seemed possible amid last week’s cage match between Elon Musk and Laura Loomer. This conflict previewed divisions that will make the Trump White House leak to reporters like a sieve. But the plutocrats almost always win, and they did so here.
The fight pitted the anti-immigrant wing of Trump’s coalition against the people President Theodore Roosevelt famously labeled malefactors of great wealth. Stripped of its racially toxic content, it was a dispute over whether the United States should grant more visas to high-skilled foreign guest workers. On Saturday, Trump ended the argument by declaring himself in favor of the H-1B program, which admits as guest workers foreigners of “distinguished merit or ability,” two-thirds of them in tech. Trump told the New York Post: “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them.”
You’d think that Trump’s declarative stance in favor of the plutocrats would drive away his true believers. But that never happened in Trump’s first term and it’s unlikely to in his second. In cultlike fashion, the MAGA faithful, guided by chief propagandist Steve Bannon, accept whatever crumbs Trump tosses their way.
Trump has not always been in favor of the visas. In a March 2016 CNN debate, Trump had this to say:
I know the H-1B very well. And it’s something that I frankly use and I shouldn’t be allowed to use it. We shouldn’t have it.… It’s very bad for our workers and it’s unfair for our workers. And we should end it.
Either Trump doesn’t remember he said this or he doesn’t care. Very likely Trump has forgotten what the H-1B program is. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” Trump told the Post. No, he doesn’t. Trump has many holders of H-2A visas, which are for lower-wage agricultural workers, and of H-2B visas, which are for lower-wage seasonal workers (typically landscape workers). Even more than last time, Trump administration policy on H-1B visas will have to be settled by others because, as I argued last month, Trump is a weak leader too ignorant and now too impaired cognitively to provide much direction. These others—Trump’s underlings—will duke it out, but in the end they’ll likely favor the H-1B program because pleasing big business is what Republicans do.
Neither side of this donnybrook came with clean hands. It began after Trump chose an Indian immigrant and venture capitalist named Sriram Krishnan to be senior White House policy adviser on artificial intelligence. (Now a United States citizen, Krishnan arrived not on an H-1B visa but an L-1 visa, which allows American companies to transfer employees to the United States from overseas.) The appointment prompted a vicious attack on Krishnan by Loomer. Loomer is a twice-failed candidate for Congress from Florida, a 9/11 conspiracist, and a self-described “white advocate” and “proud Islamaphobe” who shocks even Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene; in September Greene told CNN, “I have concerns about her rhetoric and her hateful tone.” But for some reason Trump is fond of Loomer. Although campaign aides successfully resisted Trump’s directive that she be given an official role in his reelection effort, Loomer traveled frequently with Trump.
It became evident in September that the fetid bouquet of Loomer’s racial prejudices includes a revulsion toward people of Indian heritage. The evidence was her toxic tweet that, “If @KamalaHarris wins, the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” On December 23, Loomer tweeted that Krishnan’s appointment was “deeply disturbing.” After somebody answered, “This nation was built by immigrants,” Loomer replied: “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India” where people are “still shitting in the water they bathe and drink from.” After more posts along these lines, Musk wrote on Twitter, “Loomer is trolling for attention. Ignore.” The next day, Loomer and 13 other conservatives taking her side lost their “blue-check” verification badges and said that Musk, a self-professed “free speech absolutist,” was censoring them. “Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies,” Loomer posted on X.
Amid all this Sturm und Drang it was easy to overlook that, buried under Loomer’s racism against Indians, there was a legitimate disagreement about immigration policy. Krishnan, Loomer pointed out, posted on X after the election (but before Trump named him as White House aide), “Anything to remove country caps for green cards / unlock skilled immigration would be huge.” That was in reply to Musk’s request for suggested policies for his Department of Government Efficiency (which is really just a White House commission). Loomer answered Krishnan by saying that without country caps and other such restrictions, skilled foreign labor might displace “American STEM students.” Bannon weighed in on Loomer’s side by stating on his War Room podcast, “The H-1B visa program is a total and complete scam from its top to the bottom.”
Bannon overstates the case, but it’s true that the H-1B program has been grossly abused to displace domestic tech workers, not because these workers are inferior but because H-1B workers are cheaper and easier to control. The most notorious instance occurred in 2014 when Disneyland fired 250 tech workers and subcontracted their work out to an India-based firm staffed by Indian guest workers here on H-1B visas. Ten years later, the “outsourcing loophole” remains unplugged, and in April 2023 the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute reported that the top 30 H-1B employers over the previous 15 months laid off 85,000 workers … and hired 34,000 H-1B workers. Staffing agencies have even been known to place H-1B workers inside the same Labor Department that’s supposed to police this program.
Given all that, corporate testimonials praising the H-1B program warrant considerable skepticism. Musk said the hiring of skilled guest workers was necessary because the “number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low.” That’s true up to a point. But trusting Musk to decide where that point lies would be no less foolhardy than trusting Loomer, Bannon, or Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who from his White House perch will try to kill off H-1B.
Loomer and Bannon aren’t the only excitable ones. Musk conducted his side of the argument with only a smidgen more decorum than Loomer. “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face,” Musk answered an X post (not from Loomer) that said H-1Bs shouldn’t exist. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” Musk’s DOGE co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, meanwhile, used the occasion to share a long-festering wound from his Cincinnati childhood: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” As Dr. Spielvogel says at the end of Portnoy’s Complaint, “Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?”
Perhaps you’re wondering what the last Trump administration did about H-1B visas. The short answer is, very little, though not for lack of trying. Initially, Miller and his agency allies tried to deny H-1B applications en masse, but so many of these denials were overturned in court that they gave up and sought to limit the program through regulation instead. But the rules weren’t issued until 2020, many of them after Trump lost the election, and were either vacated by federal judges or blocked by incoming President Joe Biden. In the end, the number of H-1B visas issued actually rose on Trump’s watch until the Covid epidemic drove them down in 2020 and 2021.
Miller will try again in 2025. He can’t have been happy to lose Round One to Musk. I think it will be difficult for Miller going forward because Trump is more feeble mentally than four years ago and more vulnerable financially. The latter probably explains why Trump so often allows Musk to steal the spotlight. Because of these frailties, I expect Trump’s second presidential term to be more oligarchical than the first. “I hope these last few days have taught all of you something,” Loomer posted Sunday on X. What they taught me is that the business lobby likely has less to fear from Trump than it thinks—and the rest of us likely have more.
