I want to get into this H-1B visa conversation. Now Trump is finally weighed in amid MAGA backlash, which I don’t think that there is much MAGA backlash. I think that there are a few stragglers that are trying to make waves that are being incentivized from the left to do so, but I think that it’s being promoted by the CNNs and MSNBCs as MAGA backlash. How did all of a sudden everybody become a part of MAGA? Ain’t nobody want to wear the hat. Ain’t nobody want to vote. Ain’t nobody want to vote Republican.

They was saying that MAGA is a cult. Don Lemon, we going to watch him crash out today. We going to get to that. How did all of a sudden everybody just so happen to become a part of the MAGA crew? So now if you’re a Republican, you’re MAGA. No, no, no, that’s not how this works. This is being incentivized by the people that got bad attitudes about what happened during the past election, and so they’re trying to sow discourse amongst us. But in reality, this is how you solve for problems. You learn more about it.

You have disagreements. You have discussions, and then you start to have a conversation. But let’s get to it. So Trump finally supported Elon Musk and what he said about H-1B visas and getting the top talent. Let’s continue. The holiday feud between factions of Trump’s MAGA base over H-1B visas came to a head over the weekend with the president-elect coming out in support of the program that allows the brightest foreign workers, many of them engineers and computer scientists, to live and work in the U.S. The broader debate reveals a significant rift in Trump’s MAGA base just weeks before he is set to take office.

CNN’s Brian Todd has more. The president-elect finally weighs in on a controversial issue that pits two of his top advisers against his MAGA base. Donald Trump now defends the H-1B visa program, which allows thousands of highly skilled foreign workers to immigrate to the U.S. every year to fill specialized jobs. Trump told the New York Post, quote, I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program. It’s one of the first signs of disunity or disharmony in the folks who support Trump and who are going to make up his administration.

And this is is one of the, think about what he’s saying. And they’re just saying stuff. It’s one of the first signs of disunity and disharmony from the very beginning, way back in 2015, 2016. It’s one of the very things that’s the foundation of what the Republican party is today and why we’re winning. I’ll give you an example. They tried to criticize Trump for picking J.D. Vance to be the vice president of the United States of America. Why? Because J.D. Vance at the time disagreed with what Trump was standing for and what he was saying, as far as his sentiment, thinking that Trump was actually going to be a transformer of what we stand for here in the United States of America and drain the swamp and do the things that the American people wanted to do.

Guess what? Trump won him over and J.D. Vance thinks differently. He understood the vision. He then got on board. And this is one of the reasons why he’s a part of the Trump administration today. It’s not about always agreeing with each other. It’s about having the conversations that then generate the best possible outcome. And as far back as I can remember, there has always been people in a Republican party that disagree with other people that were in a Republican party, especially if you label yourself as a Make America Great Against supporter.

And so how is this the first sign when the entire time over the last eight years, there has always been people that disagreed, agreed and then picked their spots about the things that they agree with and the things that they disagree with within a Republican party. But now it’s a fraction within the MAGA party. That is that is that is false. It’s absolutely false. It’s not true, likely to be an ongoing point of tension. Trump is now siding with billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has tapped to lead the new Department of Government efficiency.

Musk and Ramaswamy have defended the H1B program, Musk posting recently that it’s the reason he’s in America and quote, take a big step back and blank yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend. Think about this for a second. What if Elon Musk was actually not a supporter or he was one of he wasn’t able to be on our side? What if Iron Man was actually on the side of one of these other countries? What if Iron Man was over in Europe instead of here in the United States of America? What if Iron Man had created all of these great companies and he took his mindset over to Canada? What if he had never got into the United States of America and become a heavy supporter and more importantly, one of the biggest taxpayers in history? On record, they said Elon Musk has paid more taxes than anybody in the history of the United States of America.

Think about that for a second. What if Iron Man was over in Mexico? You want the best and the brightest, and this is just my personal opinion. You want the best and the brightest everywhere. You want the best and the brightest from everywhere. I want the best people working for me. And this is one of the reasons I don’t agree with identity politics. I want the best people from everywhere because the goal is to win. I mean, if that’s what we gonna do, we might as well just eliminate people from being able to come over here and participate in anything that’s not a part of the United States of America.

And more importantly, we should ban people from being able to participate in other countries because we need to make sure that we keep all of our monies and all of our talent here in the United States of America. Cut out the passport bros. Nope. You got to marry a black woman here in the United States of America. How would you feel about that? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need to keep all of the talent here because it’s not just about whether or not we’re recruiting talent is whether or not we’re exporting talent.

And so I vote that we make sure that you can’t have any person as a part of the military or any of the armed forces going over there and getting boxed or participating and doing things with people that’s outside of the United States of America cancel the passport bros. We need all money stand here. All money in, no money out. Because Dr. Umar Johnson would love that. Dr. Umar Johnson would love that. You got to keep all of your resources here in the United States of America and you cannot go out and give any money to other countries at all.

No money, no in, no out. We are now Korea. We are now North Korea. No, Royal heart give up, give up that, give up that passport. We are now North Korea. I vote that we keep it the same across the board. No Luca Donchich. No, none of that. Right. No Dirk, no whiskey. We, we never had him. We know we can’t have anybody from outside of the United States of America playing basketball on Saturday, NBA, and then going back to their home country. No, nobody, nothing, nada, zilch, no Yanis, no none of that.

No Victor Wambayana. No, no, none of that. All of them got to go play basketball in their own countries. You cannot do any, no recruiting for people to be able to take American, they taking American jobs on the United States. Wait, wait, wait. How are we going to pick and choose? How are we going to pick and choose what American jobs make sense and what American jobs don’t make sense. The goal is for the United States of America to win. The thing that Trump has always been against, and that is the sentiment of everybody.

And I’ve been saying this and screaming it from the rooftops, we cannot have illegal keyword, illegal immigration into this country because we are not vetting these people. That is why people are getting burned up on the subways. That is why people are getting burned up on the subways. Y’all can have, well, listen, it’d probably be the best thing to join. Let me just say it over there, but that’s just all another conversation. That’s why people are getting burned up on the sub, no illegal immigration into this country. But this is what happens when you start having people operate on extremes.

The H-1B visa program has always been here inside of the United States of America. Now all of a sudden it’s becoming a problem, and this is why you have to be careful who you align with. Let’s continue. But Musk and Ramaswamy’s stance is being slammed by Trump’s MAGA supporters, like his former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who said on his podcast that H-1B takes jobs from American citizens. The program from top to bottom is a scam. Look at this crazy man. There is nothing in this program that should continue to exist, nothing.

These are the coders that are going to work for a third of the salaries and work like indentured servants. That’s not American citizens. That’s not true. Trump’s comment that he’s always been in favor of the H-1B visas isn’t true. He previously opposed those visas and restricted access to them several times during his first administration in an effort to curb legal immigration. But in the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump had changed his tune on skilled workers coming to the U.S. What I want to do and what I will do is you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country.

Musk, who was born in South Africa, came to the U.S. as a foreign student, later worked in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. And it’s his companies and those of other tech giants who’ve recently courted Donald Trump, which stand to benefit from more H-1B workers in the U.S. He’s literally created an automaker that pays an egregious amount of taxes and hires American workers inside of the United States of America, the first U.S.-based automaker that has been able to rival any other automaker outside of the United States of America. And you guys would stop that.

You would have wanted to stop that. And you would prevent yourselves from being able to take care of and embrace American jobs and American innovation, then you would shoot that in the foot because you’re emotional. Okay. At least at this early stage, some of the tech leaders, including Musk, who bet on a Trump administration to deliver the policies that would be favorable to their industry, to their businesses, may be seeing some return from them. All right. Well, my panel is back to discuss all this further. Steven, I want to start with you because you had a big picture piece for CNN.com on this, where you write, in the coming weeks, Trump’s ability to reconcile the differing interests among conservative budget hawks, hardline MAGA lawmakers, and comparative moderates who may be vulnerable in the 2026 general election will dictate the fate of his aggressive legislative plans on immigration, budget trimming, and tax cuts.

So this is a test. Right. I think this issue does show the fissures in the new Trump coalition. It’s very interesting this time around. It’s not just the MAGA grassroots working class base. You’ve got this new tech Silicon Valley aspect to it. That said, all presidents have to manage their coalitions. This is nothing new. I think the question is, going forward, will Trump side on more issues with Elon Musk and people, the millionaires and the billionaires in his cabinet, who’ve got strong self-interests as they go into the government for their own businesses, or will he step back and be worried about alienating some of his most loyal supporters? In his first term, we didn’t see many occasions when he was willing to get out in front of that core support.

Anastacio Rodriguez throws in a crazy thing and says, yeah, we will see how this will affect us in 15 years. Man, don’t you know the H-1B visa program has been in effect for well over 15 years. Don’t you know that we’ve always recruited the best and the brightest to go to our schools, to pay taxes here, to work within our industries. That’s called legal migration. The majority of the wealth that is created here in the United States of America is not being created by people that’s passing on generational wealth. It’s being created by people that are innovating first time millionaires and migrants that come over into the country and create great companies and then employ American workers and pay the most taxes.

That is a fact. That is not my opinion. Nobody is against migration. Everybody is against illegal migration. So when y’all say stuff like this, it shows me how ignorant you are because chances are a lot of people wouldn’t even have a job if it wasn’t for some of these people that come over here and innovate inside the United States of America. So I don’t even know what y’all saying. Stephen, I want to start, I want to bring to you this from the Wall Street Journal editorial board backing Trump on Sunday, writing Trump may be wrong in trying to save TikTok, but he has right to endorse the value of H-1B visas and the dispute between Elon Musk and Steve Bannon.

Mr. Trump is choosing the side of enlightened nationalism as opposed to the blinkered declineist version. So how do you square this with his America first mantra that Lamar says, I don’t know why this is so controversial now. This isn’t a new thing because Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy mentioned it and they talked about American culture. Nobody was thinking about it. Listen, most people that are now concerned and weighing in on this issue had no insight whatsoever about the H-1B visa program. They had no clue. They never worked with it. They never even seen anybody that mentioned it.

They don’t know anybody that’s a part of the H-1B visa program. All of their friends is in the hood and the only people that they follow on Instagram are rappers. Most people that are now weighing in on this are ops. They’re trolls and that’s not all, but it’s a lot of people. Listen, all of a sudden, all of these women are being, they become an expert on H-1B visa program. Get the hell out of here. You ain’t even got to passport yourself, but all of a sudden you an expert on the H-1B visa program.

You never even knew it existed. You never even knew it existed. You thought that every migrant that came over into the United States of America was picking strawberries and cherries and doing janitor jobs. All of a sudden, all of the women on Instagram and TikTok is experts on the H-1B visa program. Get the hell out of here. You ain’t know nothing about no visa program. You thought that the only reason that people came over here was to pick cherries and you only heard about passport bros. That’s the only thing you knew and Brittany Griner leaving Russia.

Now they all of a sudden experts and you concerned about the H-1B visa program. You don’t even know nobody. You don’t know nobody. That’s on the H-1B visa program. Now you concerned. You ain’t got to worry about it. Listen, you in particular don’t have to worry about nobody taking your job because it’s plentiful, plentiful jobs, getting them fries, getting my fries hot. I’m coming through the drive through in a minute. I want them hot. Don’t give me that old stuff sitting under that red light. I want new fries, new fries, and put my salt on there too.

Lightly salted. They not coming to take your job. I promise you ain’t nobody angling to get an H-1B visa to take your job. They not using your tax dollars. They’re not taking your jobs. They’re not tripping off of you at all. They arguably propelled him back to the White House. Well, I think this goes to my point I made with talking about the Johnson Ray. He’s gonna have to get involved. I think a little bit more deeply. A lot of this disagreement happened over the holiday when he really wasn’t involved. And once he did, it has declined to me.

Even the people who are still opposed are attacking Musk notably, not Donald Trump. I think that’s a very notable tone message change. And I think, look, they gonna take good paying American jobs. You don’t know nobody. You don’t know nobody. All y’all keep saying, yeah, I work in tech. Man, you work in the call center, bruh. And there’s nothing wrong. You do support. You do support. You know when they call in and say, hey, man, my computer not working. Internal support. And then they get on the phone with you and you say, yeah, okay, so the first thing that you probably need to do, did you reset your computer? Yeah, I reset my computer.

Okay, so let’s troubleshoot this for a second. Do you have everything turned off in your cubicle? Is there a power issue? You ain’t built NAMM program. You ain’t been a scrum master. You ain’t been a product owner, a project manager. You ain’t been a software engineer, front end, back end. You don’t know HTML. You don’t know JavaScript. You don’t know CSS. You don’t know. What are we talking about? Like, come on, stop, stop. They’re not trying to take your job. I promise you. I know them. I can call them right now. They’re not trying to take your job.

They’re not trying to take your job. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Stop telling me that I need to reset my computer. I did that three times already. Stop telling me, do you want to change your password, Anton? No. I changed my password already. I changed my password. Stop telling me to reset my password. Did you reset your password? You’re just reading from a script and you selecting something on, uh, you selecting a piece of software. You’re going through the answers and the pros and cons that A, Anton Daniels designed for you.

And then B, some engineer on the H1B visa program has developed for you on your screen. You don’t even know that we training you to use the software that’s being developed by somebody that was on the H1B visa program. That’s the truth. It’s the honest to God truth. We’re also seeing again to bring it back to Congress. I think Republicans are very, very keen in the fact of their first priorities. They need to be things that unify. So look, H1B is an important part. I don’t think you can do that first package with this vision.

You just reading the script that we put in because we reprogrammed sales force to be what we wanted it to be. So now you just reading off the script that we gave you. That’s it. That’s it. Uh, did you reboot your computer? Did you turn off your router and start leave your router off for no, unplug it, leave your router off for 10 seconds and plug it back up. Okay. [tr:trw].

See more of The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels on their Public Channel and the MPN The Millionaire Morning Show w/ Anton Daniels channel.