'Tension in MAGA' builds as 'power struggle' erupts: Morning Joe guest
A schism erupted last week between two factions in Donald Trump's coalition, and an anti-Trump conservative commentator said that bodes poorly for his impending presidency.
Tech mogul Elon Musk and his budget-slashing DOGE partner Vivek Ramaswamy faced blowback for questioning the abilities of American workers to justify the need for H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, and The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the clash showed the fragility of Trump's coalition.
"Well, look, on one level there is a power struggle going on inside of MAGA," Skyes said. "On another level, this is a substantive dispute, which is inevitable in a populist movement that is now dominated by billionaire tech bro elitists, and that's going to show up in a lot of issues. Look, a lot of the MAGA base was motivated by the fear of immigrants and resentment against immigrants, foreigners, taking jobs that they think that Americans should have, and here comes Elon Musk and saying that, 'Yeah, there are not enough Americans, Americans are' – and he endorsed the word retarded – 'are not smart enough, not skilled enough to take all these high-tech jobs, we need to import foreigners like me.' Well, clearly that's going to cause tension in MAGA."
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"This is a campaign that was based upon fear of foreigners coming in and taking your communities, your jobs, all of those things," Sykes added, "and so, these latecomers, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, really have very different value systems. I think they have different agendas than the MAGA base, so this is going to play out over a long period of time. Right now, to no one's surprise, Donald Trump is siding with the billionaire tech bros, but the base is not going to change its position on immigration and sometimes, you know, ideas have consequences – but so does racial demagoguery."
The South African-born Musk and the Indian-American Ramaswamy seemed unprepared for the backlash they faced after publicly backing the need for highly skilled immigrants to take tech jobs, Sykes said.
"I think what was really extraordinary was watching how shocked Elon Musk and some of his buddies were to find out that many of their new MAGA allies are, in fact, pretty racist when it comes to Indian immigrants," Sykes said, "and it seemed like they were shocked, like, 'Wait, we were supposed to be afraid of those immigrants, now you're coming for our immigrants? We didn't mean that.'"
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