Trump sides with Elon Musk in the H-1B visa debate: Here's what you need to know

joining us right now Wall Street Journal columnist Tim Higgins his latest piece Maga versus musk immigration fights cracks populist Tech bro Alliance Tim is also a CNBC contributor but Tim uh this has been a pretty interesting Fallout to watch among the two factions at work here obviously president-elect Trump weighing in at this point saying that he's in favor of the H1B Visa Pro uh proposals and plans um does that end the debate at this point probably not uh probably still some grumbling but anybody in politics who's been kind of watching this Coalition that Trump built

over the past year to kind of win the White House kind of suspected that there would be this kind of uh jam up at the end uh the tech industry so dependent upon that highd skilled labor uh whereas there's others in this country who feel like uh immigration uh any kind of immigration essentially is taking taking away American jobs and so really these were two camps that were heading towards Collision I think what's was surprising was the kind of the the the the level the tenor of that kind of outburst that occurred in the last

few days and how uh kind of excited we saw Elon Musk at how how really kind of vocal he became in defending that position uh clearly very important to him remember he is an immigrant who became a US citizen and clearly out there swing very hard at anybody who's kind of going after that program you know the the tenor on the other side of that debate though has has been pretty contemptible uh this all was sparked after sham krishan's appointment to the Trump Administration to act as a policy advisor when it comes to AI policy

on things there were some pretty racist posts that were made things people saying things like who elected this Indian to run America I mean there there are some pretty terrible elements that have come out and comeing to play in this and I can understand the push back to that particular sort of vitrio yeah absolutely some ugly ugly stuff indeed in fact it's interesting because that position he's appointed to is for AI it's not related to immigration and his the post that really kind of pulled in this broader debate that he had made on on on

X didn't have to do with H1B visas he was talking about Green cards I know that's a Nuance here but it gets to this big issue that throughout the campaign there was not a lot of nuance when it came to talking about immigration it was a huge issue on on the Trump side Elon Musk was out there uh railing against illegal immigration saying that he supports legal immigration always but uh I think some of those supporters in the Trump World saw his comments about illegal immigration and and kind of extrapolated that he was on board

uh fighting uh that bigger battle and clearly Elon isn't when it gets down to the Nuance of the situation so not a lot of nuance was flying around in the last few months the other side of that debate we mentioned Steve Bannon as being somebody who is opposed to to this thinks that it is taking away American jobs some of the other people who have been supporters on that side would be somebody like a Lara lumer or a Matt Gates um maybe it's not a huge surprise that that President elect Trump would come down on

the side of some of those highlevel uh Business Leaders and billionaires that helped get him elected you know it's it was somewhat confusing because in the past he has been against H1B visas and then uh earlier this year uh when he went on the all-in podcast David saaks podcast he was talking in support of it uh the campaign tried to maybe claw back some of those comments so there was a little uncertainty exactly where he his head was on this issue and I think that's kind of what allowed the debate to grow so fierce in

the last few days was that essentially the two camps are making the argument in public this kind of Public Town Square debate of where the party should go um in kind of a dramatic way uh yeah so very unusual to see this happen but I think in the last few weeks we've seen how Elon Musk is going to be engaging in these political debates right whether it was the spending issue uh and Congress where the house was trying to pass that A continuing resolution that he didn't like and now this he's clearly using his uh

bully pulpit to ver push very dramatically the things that he wants politically