MAGA, Unified After New Year's Day Terrorist Attacks, Pretends it Never Had a Public Civil War Over Immigration Visas
Bottling up resentments and grievances usually exacerbates dysfunction
Remember that huge public H-1B Visa debate that was boiling over into outright MAGA civil war?
That was SO 2024.
2025 is all about migrant terrorist attacks, which, oddly enough, haven’t actually occurred yet in the new year.
For MAGA, this Holiday Season (sorry, still can’t say “Christmas”; it’s illegal as long Biden is in office) was split into two distinct eras: 2024 and 2025.
The MAGA Eras Tour: 2024-2025 Holiday Edition
2024
2024 ended like a shook-up champagne bottle that was just uncorked, releasing a torrent of emotion that previously had to be held back in favor of solidarity in order to win the election.
A simple under-the-radar administration appointment by Trump started a whirlwind of anger, frustration, resentment, and finger-pointing that appeared to open wounds for MAGA that would be too painful to heal.
Sriram Krishnan, an Indian immigrant, was Trump’s pick to for senior advisor on artificial intelligence. Suddenly, nuance was introduced into the MAGA immigration policy bloodstream….by Trump himself, no less. Which is weird because we all know Trump’s attitude toward bloodstreams (he doesn’t like them being poisoned).
I’m not a very good Xitter forensic investigator, thank God, so I can’t say for sure exactly who started the push back and when, but the infamous psycho-shock pseudo-journalist Laura Loomer was one of the early critics that pointed out the hypocrisy of appointing a non-citizen migrant to an influential advisory position after telling the country that migrants are dangerous criminals that are eating our cats and dogs.
This morphed into an intensely childish yet surprisingly informative debate about the H-1B Visa program, which is a common visa that many employers in the tech and science industries utilize to hire high-skilled and lower-cost workers.
Krishnan himself never took advantage of the H-1B visa and does not have any obvious history of arguing for or against the program in any way. He was originally in the country on an L-1 Visa, which is an intra-company transfer visa. It can probably be safely assumed that he would be in favor is maintaining, if not expanding, the H-1B visa program due to his employment history, but he was not involved in this recent MAGA fray, so we don’t know for sure.
The argument snowballed from here, as documented on many Substack newsletters that captured the dramatic twists and turns of the debate as it played out on Xitter.
The culmination was when Elon Musk, an immigrant himself, posted a juvenile directive for those questioning the H-1B visa to go “FUCK YOURSELVES IN THE FACE”. Then, as owner of Xitter, he began to make adjustments to many anti-H-1B visa MAGA accounts that lowered their reach and reduced the allowable length of their posts. Basically, the anointed leader of the modern “free speech” movement engaged in outright censorship to quell the growing dissent towards him and immigrants’ work visas, from which he greatly profits.
At this point, Donald Trump himself finally chimed in and took a side. And it wasn’t the side of the MAGA base. In contrast to his previous position wholly against H-1B visas, he said he is very fond of them after all, aligning himself with Musk.
This put a wet blanket on the raging argument for a moment, as when the cult leader speaks, the cult listens. But it was an awkward time for MAGA, now faced with a blatant betrayal by their own leader. Would they alter their beliefs in deference to Trump, or would this be the beginning of an irreversible schism in MAGA world?
With the new Congress being sworn in just a few days later, and the Speakership vote coming up, this all seemed like a relevant issue that could seep into the media landscape just as MAGA Republicans in Washington assumed power.
But, alas, the news cycle gods had other ideas, and MAGA got their much-needed distraction required to take this dysfunction out of the spotlight.
2025
Literally on the first day of the year MAGA’s attention suddenly turned to violent migrant criminals crossing our borders and committing terrorist attacks.
Never mind that none of this actually happened. Again, nuance can be a tricky thing. Although, “nuance” in this context is doing a lot of work, because it’s not exactly a small intricate detail that in each of the cases of high-profile terrorist attacks on New Year’s Day, the attacker was a U.S. Citizen army veteran born and raised in within our borders.
But in the early moments just after these incidents, when the facts were being gathered and ignorant speculation was high, a light switch turned on and MAGA reflexively denounced the attacks as being perpetrated by violent migrants that just recently crossed our wide-open borders, thanks to Joe Biden.
It’s hard to find any mention now among the most vocal MAGA hardliners of H-1B visas. Laura Loomer’s last Xitter post that mentioned them was on the very last day of 2024. There’s been nothing on them since. Now it’s all open borders and censorship.
And so began a new era. And thankfully for MAGA, it is an era of unity that harkens back to the pre-election solidarity that coalesced around this issue. They can declare once again that violent criminal migrants are bad, while insinuating that the other national party doesn’t agree.
How long will this era last and will it be reshaped by further facts and developments?
We don’t know for sure, but we do know that this is MAGA’s comfort zone, and they will gravitate to “migrants/criminals/border” themes at even the slightest scent of blood.
Festering Dysfunction
Near the end of the 2024 era, some of the more pseudo-intellectual MAGA personalities, such as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams or Charlie Kirk, could sense a problem. They tried to move on and sweep the H-1B visa conflict under the rug. They tried to frame the conflict as a much-needed quality debate where everyone got to clear the air and resolve their differences, and “learn something” in the process.
But the late 2024 era of MAGA never really resolved. Elon Musk didn’t give an inch after telling his followers to perform obscene act in their own faces. He is still front and center in the right-wing transition to power. Trump is still unabashedly transactional, showing a penchant for casting the MAGA base aside in favor of large-donor billionaires.
Trump’s support among his base withstood the awkwardly divergent Covid vaccine sentiments. Trump was the one in power at the time of the fast-tracked vaccine development, something he originally touted, only to be shamed into censoring himself on the subject by this very base. Once he started getting boos at rallies after mentioning this accomplishment, his enthusiastic bragging ceased.
It’s unlikely Trump is going to be bragging in future rallies about the benefits of the H-1B visa program. He gets some of his loudest cheers after demonizing immigrants, after all. He’s not going to risk getting boos.
But the more Musk hangs around, and the more that prominent anti-immigrant voices such as Steve Bannon or Laura Loomer bang the xenophobic drum, the more the potential energy for a MAGA break-up builds.
Angry right-wing populism is unlikely to be abated as a result. The dysfunction continues to fester.
And after the next two years of complete MAGA control of the government, if something doesn’t change for them, they could go back to their couches in future elections.
Or perhaps start up the next even more extreme rageful faction of party takeover.
Dysfunction, when allowed to fester, is unpredictable that way.