“That Pretty Much Sums It Up”: Elon Musk Defends H-1B Visas Amid Split Between Trump Tech Bros And MAGA ‘Right Right’

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The past couple of days have exposed a fissure in Donald Trump‘s coalition over H-1B visas, used by major tech firms and some major media congloms to lure highly skilled workers to employment in the United States. “That pretty much sums it up,” Musk wrote on X on Thursday evening. “This was eye-opening.” Musk was responding to a post in which an X user wrote, “So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and 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 retarded,’ and the right right is like ‘well you don’t train us,’ and the tech right is like ‘you can’t outtrain being retarded,’ and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don’t like Indians.” Musk, himself an immigrant, also wrote that “maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.

This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA.

Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.” But the divide between Musk and other Trump-supporting tech tycoons and traditional MAGA came to a head on Thursday.

That’s when Vivek Ramaswamy, who is partnered with Musk on a project to remake the federal government, posted on X on Thursday, “The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong