Supporters disagree with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

MAGA celebrities lead criticism

Trump supporters show resistance to Musk

Special regulations for foreign tech specialists upset Trump supporters. They fear that Elon Musk will undermine calls for less immigration.

Donald Trump seems to enjoy being surrounded by the big names in the tech industry. Elon Musk hardly leaves his side anymore, but Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have also paid their respects. In a post on his network Truth Social on Saturday, Trump announced a visit from Bill Gates – and immediately invited Musk.

But the proximity to the tech giants is not well received by some of his most loyal supporters. Critical voices are coming from the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, which has vehemently supported Trump’s demand for less immigration and deportations. When Trump recently announced Sriram Krishnan as an artificial intelligence advisor, a row broke out. He has spoken out in favor of more well-educated immigrants.

In the front row of critics is Laura Loomer, who was seen as a Trump whisperer during the election campaign. She appears to have lost influence over the president-elect. Her accusations are all the louder: Krishnan’s stance is “not an America First policy,” she wrote on X. The tech executives who have allied themselves with Trump are doing this to enrich themselves.

Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom are supposed to optimize government business, promptly spoke up in the immigration debate. They underscored their opinion that American technology companies need foreign talent. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” Musk wrote in a post. “That’s the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Musk himself was once in the US on an H1B skilled worker immigrant visa.

In a lengthy post on social media, Ramaswamy – son of Indian immigrants – also argued that without highly skilled foreign workers, the US is doomed and American culture has settled for “mediocrity.”

But Loomer doesn’t let go: “VivekGRamaswamy knows that the Great Disengagement is real,” she wrote. She was alluding to a conspiracy theory from the extreme right in the USA that there are efforts to replace Americans with immigrants. “It is not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policy that I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H1B visas. Not an extension.”

But she also directly attacked the heads of tech companies and their visits to Trump’s residence: “The tech billionaires can’t just walk into Mar-a-Lago and show off their thick checkbooks and rewrite our immigration policy so that they can import unlimited slave laborers from India and… “We can have China that never adapts,” she railed.

Laura Loomer is not alone. Pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley wryly noted that he loves seeing how “they tell you outright that they have no understanding of American culture.” “And then they have the nerve to tell you that YOU are the problem with America,” he said. And Nikki Haley, former Trump challenger, wrote: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture . You just have to look around the border and see how many want what we have. We should invest in and prioritize Americans, not foreign workers.”

Trump himself has so far remained conspicuously reserved about the dispute. Otherwise at a loss for an answer, he has remained silent so far. This may be because he hopes the dispute will resolve itself, or believes that Laura Loomer’s influence is not enough to turn the MAGA movement against him. However, the debate has gained momentum on Platform X, also because Loomer accuses Musk of deleting their verification and no longer allowing subscribers. Some of your posts have been seen 80,000 times.