Elon Musk ‘melts down’ after underestimating wrath of MAGA trolls

good evening from New York I'm Chris Hayes uh we still have three weeks until Donald Trump is sworn into his second term there's no denying that with some gen genuine political cand Trump has cobbled together an unwieldy and in many respects somewhat unlikely political Coalition and that Coalition delivered him the first outright popular vote victory for a Republicans since George W Bush in 2004 it's only the second time it has happened since the end of the Cold War now Trump has to actually govern and that is typically when all the internal contradictions in any political

Coalition rise to the surface we're not even to inauguration yet and that factional fighting I would argue is bigger and more glaring than almost any other I've ever witnessed in American politics you're seeing that right now in the battle over immigration which has been exploding among the Maga right basically Elon Musk and Vic ramaswami the tech overlords who appear to be running Trump's second-term agenda rely on highly skilled immigrants to power their Enterprises those immigrants come to this country to work with an H1B Visa which provides terms that are extremely favorable to their employers and

also an amazing opportunity for the folks coming to work here folks basically have to stay at their job in order to stay in the country if they leave their position they have two months to find a new job or risk getting deported so you can see why someone like Elon Musk likes them so much for example this is not abstract when musk bought Twitter and a huge percentage of the staff headed for the exits Vice news reported on how Twitter employees on Visa can't just quit the other side of the debate over the H1B Visa

is the one that folks like Steven Miller and Stephen Bannon have been pushing for years that we should restrict limit perhaps end all immigration in the US legal and illegal right stuff at the border around Asylum but also H1B visas I mean just listen to the two of them on bannon's Old Radio Show back in March of 2016 this before Trump was even the Republican nominated take a listen they see these oligarchs down there with 54 private jets and they're not down there for their health they're called together by Carl Rove and it's a stop

Trump movement it's a stop Trump movement because they want unlimited hb1 visas isn't the Beating Heart of this problem right now the real Beating Heart of it of what we got to get sorted here is not illegal immigration as horrific as that is and it's horrific and don't we have a problem we've looked the other way on this legal immigration that's kind of overwhelmed the country the history of America is that an immigration on period is followed by an immigration off period so see be very clear there right H1B visas legal immigration and immigration off

period like they have a pretty Clear Vision Miller is going to be the one writing that border bill so those two factions the Republican party with pretty profoundly different views are at each other's throats about what to do with their new found power should they use the legal immigration system to continue supplying Silicon Valley and other Industries with highly skilled workers or should they apply some new racist immigrant exclusion act like the Chinese Exclusion Act to deport all those workers and let their American let Americans take their jobs defense of the former argument that is

continuing H1B visas Elon Musk spent his Christmas week absolutely melting down the social media platform he owns he has since deleted many of those posts including one that replied approvingly to a post calling American burn workers in general a slur the RW for being too stupid to be able to do the jobs that workers on H1B visas were doing one emblematic post is still up where mus tells opponents of H1B visas to F themselves before pledging to go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend although he seems to have

underestimated how much the Maga die hards hate immigration his online base of right-wing Twitter trolls quickly turned on him spurned d by the likes of Bannon as well as Laura lommer The Fringe far right activist who spent much of the Fall coing up to Trump before his campaign stepped in and pushed her aside this is not a civil war because they're not Tough Enough they're just not I don't think that um it's acceptable for George Soros Elon Musk or Peter teal it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle a billionaire is on I don't

think that it's acceptable for billionaires to have this much power and this much access on the policy dispute here and there is a real one uh Trump actually took mide on it coming out in support of H1B visas in comments the New York Post quote I have many H1B visas on my properties I've been a believer in H1B I've used it many times it's a great program now I have to say I think Trump might be confused here I don't think his properties are hiring a ton of say like software Engineers off H1B as the

New York Times reports Trump has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named but starkly different h2b Visa program which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers of course you could drive yourself crazy trying to track trans position on anything at any given moment in 2016 of course he called for guess what the H1B to be banned Nobody Knows the system better than me I know the H1B I know the h2b nobody knows it better than me and I know the H1B very well and it's something that I frankly use and I

shouldn't be allowed to use we shouldn't have it very very bad for workers regardless it was nice of trump to back his co-president Elon mus this time not that it helped much as mus seems to have backed down he now calls our legal immigration system broken and in one sense you know there's a bunch of weirdos online fighting with each other uh you know it's a day ending and why but these people I mean the guy who's about to be president in the world's richest man they're about to be in power they're going to be

making decisions if if this fight was any indication this fractured Coalition is not going to make governing that easy for them when they get in power the K copon is the staff writer of the Atlantic and author of Romney oring Charlie Dent as a former Republican Congressman of Pennsylvania and they join me now m i I thought of you because about a month ago you and I had a conversation in my podcast why this happening the main theme of which was yes this Coalition was successful politically yes they they won and they will control the

house and the Senate and the presidency but there are deep internal real genuine factions and fights and tensions ideologically and and it was interesting that immigration was the first one we've sort of seen kind of blow up it's especially interesting because immigration has been kind of like the defining issue of the Trump era in a lot of ways right and in some ways what's happening now is only the latest flare up and a pretty old fight in the Republican Coalition you can take any presidential election of the 21st century and find this divide between Chamber

of Commerce Republicans and the Wall Street editorial board on one one side Wall Street Journal editorial board and on the other side kind of conservative talk radio FOX News and the right-wing base on the other um every Republican presidential candidate in the last 25 years has tried to straddle this line you remember Mitt Romney in 2012 he talked about self deportation that was kind of his red meat to the base he also talked about stapling a green card on every college diploma of an immigrant who came to the US right and so what's interesting is

that Trump uh you know made immigration one of his key wedges in 2016 in the Republican primaries he was seen as this extremely populist figure um but I don't think we should be that surprised that he has now found himself siding with what is essentially the Chamber of Commerce position on immigration big shock yeah well well here's the thing I talked to a republican elected official uh just a couple weeks ago who said you know the thing about Trump that people always failed to understand is that the most consistent metric he uses to judge people

is their their uh their net worth right it's how much money they have and so we should not be shocked that Elon Musk has been allowed in the hen house it's not because of his you know searing political Charisma it's because he's incredibly wealthy there is a reason that Trump often defers to his golf buddies and high dollar donors and allies in Silicon Valley and Wall Street uh he he cares what those people think of him so I think that that helps un that should help inform how this kind of battle is going to play

out and it's also why why Bannon is is sort of so you know angry about this it's somewhat performative but and Charlie look you I mean I've I've covered this issue for 20 years you're you're a veteran of these exact fights where there really is this tension that McKay highlighted what I think is interesting to me this new factor which is musk brings this totally different set of ideological like commitments and also material commitments into this universe that weren't there even six months ago like now it's like everything has to be about well there's the

Trump position there's the base and then there's what does Elon Musk think and I've never seen anything like it where there's just this new it's like a new planet came in and now everything has to orbit around that as well