The Left Revels in Epic Musk Meltdown

TL/DR: MAGA really needs to pull it together.

***UPDATE: My beloved reader Vee let me know that I stupidly published this post this morning with that asinine “only paid subscribers can comment” default setting activated, so my apologies. I’ve told you guys that I will not do that, and I won’t. I live for your comments and you don’t have to give me a dime to express your thoughts. Carry on.***

ICYMI, over the weekend, the GOP group chat got a little spicy—with a certain billionaire technocrat clashing hard with a few notable Republican hardliners. The Daily Beast called it an “all-out MAGA civil war” before stubbing its toe in its rush to delight in the political schism:

“The logic-twisting alliance between Silicon Valley’s new oligarchs and the home-spun patriotism at the heart of the Republican grassroots movement is shattering before our very eyes.”

The tiff has to do with Elon Musk’s stance on H-1B visas, a type of non-immigrant visa that allows US employers to temporarily hire foreign workers, ostensibly for highly technical or specialized positions (you know, like software engineers, janitors, and pickleball instructors). Even though Team Trump campaigned on a platform of secure borders and mass deportations and protect American jobs, Musk is openly, vocally, all in on H-1B visas, contending that “importing” the best talent is key to staying competitive in the global marketplace. Critics—most notably far-right activist Laura Loomer—are accusing the Rocket Man of betraying Americans and stealing their jobs in favor of cheap labor. In response to publicizing her POV, Loomer’s premium X account was demonetized (allegedly along with at least a dozen more conservative accounts).

Musk went on to drop verbal napalm all over X, crudely telling folks like Loomer who disagree with his take to “[perform an anatomically impossible autoerotic act],” adding, “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

The Internet seems to be unsure whether that was a threat, a promise, the work of a bot, or a megalomaniacal mogul’s embarrassing temper tantrum.

But people like this guy swear up and down that H-1B visas only go to foreigners because “no American could do these jobs.” SMH.

Vivek Ramaswamy backed his billionaire DOGE co-captain with a blistering (albeit, not entirely inaccurate) diss of our societal fabric as a whole. “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken [sic] from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.”

The Internet held its breath waiting for Trump to weigh in. When he did, his words sounded like they’d been pulled from the [nonexistent] children’s book, See Trump Speak.

The president-elect’s current position is a far cry—more like a dramatic 180—from 2016, when Trump insisted the H-1B program existed for “the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay,” and promised to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program.”

Dozens of substackers have been deep-diving the feud—there’s a year’s worth of content for you right there—and all I can say is that I haven’t seen folks this feisty on X since Chili’s and Applebee’s clashed over who had the better deal on bottomless chips and salsa. The slings and arrows are enough to make this girl’s head wobble on her neck. They offer little in the way of constructive solutions and instead unleash an angry torrent of questions:

• Is Musk a self-serving traitor?

• Is Trump a two-faced liar?

• When did the racist card become the most powerful one in the deck?

• Is this about immigration at all—or is it yet another broken bit of bureaucracy being dragged into the spotlight, possibly on purpose?

• Is it a molehill-turned-mountain thanks to Democrat fuel designed to divide MAGA?

• Is it possible to hold two opposing beliefs at the same time (namely that the US needs to attract high-level talent to maintain a competitive global edge while also being obligated to protect Americans)?

• It is all just more of the same political theater engineered to work the unwashed masses into a frenzy and distract us from something far more sinister going on? (Hi, Vee!)

• Importantly, what has happened to us as a society when just about any disagreement—even among allies—automatically and instantaneously devolves into a petty pissing match?

My takes, respectively: Possibly, probably (*he’s a politician, after all), not sure but probably around two-thousand-and-George-Floyd, the latter, might be, absolutely, one hundred percent, and I’m blaming social media.

Tell me what you think in the comments (bonus points for giving my See Trump Speak graphic due props ‘cuz seriously, I spent an hour on that hahahahaha).

If I occasionally make you smile, think, LOL, or spit coffee into your keyboard, feel free to toss some spare change into the tip jar. :)

If you loved this book, would you kindly leave a quick review?