The Ideological Schism Fueling the Trump-Musk Fight

Politico

11 hours ago

Amid the fallout of the messy public feud between Doland Trump and Elon Musk, it is instructive to think back to Dec. 26, 2024.
That day marked the start of another intra-GOP skirmish that nearly fractured the elite core of the MAGA coalition. The December brawl — which, like the latest one, unfolded primarily online — pitted two high-profile factions of the Trumpian right against one another over the issue of high-skilled immigration. The nationalist-populist right, led by MAGA strategist Steve Bannon, urged the incoming administration to end the H-1B visa program as part of a broader crackdown on immigration. The so-called tech right, led by Musk, wanted Trump to defend the program on the grounds that high-skilled immigration is integral to spurring economic growth and fueling 'American dynamism.' Ultimately, the tech right carried the day, with Trump intervening in the online spat to defend the H-1B program.
After the feud, the two sides struck a tentative peace, and the contretemps quieted down as Trump reentered office. But the renewal of hostilities between Trump and Musk this week shows that the underlying ideological disagreement between the two factions was never really resolved. And despite all the current bluster about the 'big, beautiful' spending bill, the Epstein files, the ballooning national debt and Musk and Trump's overlarge egos, that divide still runs straight through the same issue that carved up the factions back in December: immigration.
That may seem counterintuitive, given that the latest blow-up between Trump and Musk is ostensibly over the fiscal consequences of Trump's megabill — and specifically Musk's contention, supported by independent analyses but rejected by the Trump administration, that the bill would add significantly to the federal debt.
But when you strip away all the salacious controversies swirling around the 'BBB,' the fight over the legislation ultimately boils down to the question of whether cracking down on immigration should stand alone as the Trump administration's guiding priority.
In the eyes of the MAGA populists, the $155 billion that the BBB appropriates for immigration enforcement and Trump's mass deportation efforts more than justify its passage, whatever its fiscal shortcomings might be. As Stephen Miller, the populist right's go-to immigration hawk, recently put it, the bill includes 'the most significant border security and deportation effort in history' — a fact which 'alone makes this the most important legislation for the conservative project in the history of the nation.'
That immigration is at the center of the administration's pitch for the bill should come as no surprise. Since 2016, the issue has been the ideological keystone around which Trump has built his protean and sometimes unwieldy coalition. During the 2024 campaign, Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, proposed solving practically every issue that was thrown their way — from the housing shortage to inflation to 'wokeness' — by tying it back to their promised immigration crackdown. Once in office, the president's first acts included claiming unprecedented emergency authority to carry out his plan for mass deportations.
But the centrality of immigration created tension as Musk and his fellow travelers on the tech right began to enter MAGA fold in the leadup to the 2024 election. The tech right threw its weight behind Trump's proposed agenda on immigration, but it was never the group's top priority. Much more important for MAGA's tech faction was taming the federal deficit, which Musk and others moguls — notably Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel — continue to view as an existential threat to the country's future. Their anxiety about the federal debt is rooted as much in their libertarianism as it is in their self-interest: every dollar the federal government spends servicing the federal debt is a dollar that it does not invest in the supposedly revolutionary technologies — backed by their firms — that they believe will lead to true 'American dynamism.'
The misalignment between the priorities of the populist right and the tech right was clear from the start. It was apparent to Miller, who just this week raged that 'you will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.' It was also apparent to Vance — a perceptive observer of the coalitional dynamics within the MAGA movement — who dedicated an entire speech earlier this spring to arguing that immigration restriction and technological innovation could be mutually-reinforcing goals. 'This idea that tech-forward people and the populists are somehow inevitably going to come to a loggerhead is wrong,' said Vance, identifying himself as 'a proud member of both tribes.'
Vance, it turns out, was wrong. To the contrary, the Trump-Musk schism is proof that MAGA loyalists can't have their cake and eat it too. They must choose — a maximalist immigration crackdown, or something else. The vengeance with which the populist right has turned on Musk since his spat with Trump is proof of what happens when a Trump ally — even the richest man on Planet Earth — chooses something else.
That the fight really hinged on immigration became clear from the commentary coming out of the populist right. 'Debt is BAD. The migrant crisis is orders of magnitude worse,' posted the activist Charlie Kirk in the midst of the blowup. 'I've never seen debt hold an apartment building hostage,' added another conservative commentator, referring to reports of gang-occupied apartment buildings in Colorado. Then there was Bannon himself, who responded to the feud by suggesting — what else? — that Trump should deport Musk.
The near-term consequences of the Trump-Musk schism remain to be seen. Whispers of peace talks between Trump and Musk flitted around Washington on Friday, and Trump has publicly downplayed the significance of the skirmish. At this point, no other big names on the tech right have followed Musk in breaking from Trump. And even if Musk were to actively challenge Trump's GOP — by funding primary challenges to Republican incumbents or even trying to start his own party, as he hinted at on Thursday — the consequences would likely be less dire for the future of the MAGA movement than he might think. Vance, the presumptive heir to the MAGA throne, has been building his own independent fundraising network since 2022, which could insulate him from any Musk-related financial aftershocks. Vance 2028 would certainly like to have access to Musk's campaign dollars, but it's not reliant on them.
In the long run, though, the Trump-Musk feud will cement immigration as the critical litmus test for membership in Trump's GOP. The critical ideological fault line within the MAGA movement runs between people who view immigration restriction as a means to an end and those who see it as an end in themselves. The thrashing of Elon Musk is a warning to anyone who finds themselves on the wrong side of that divide.