Slapped-Down Musk Forced Into Massive U-Turn After MAGA Meltdown

Elon Musk is now trying to patch up a gaping chasm in the MAGA world in a bid to survive intense blowback to his immigration position.

After a whirlwind week where President-elect Donald Trump’s DOGE co-chief agreed with a post that called Americans too “retarded” to exclusively fill the U.S. tech workforce and urged detractors to “take a big step back and F--- YOURSELF in the face,” he has decided to simmer down slightly.

Musk, who in his face f-----g comment said he’d “go to war” over his favor of H-1B visas, appears to have rowed back considerably, despite publicly having Trump’s backing.

Responding to a post on X claiming the visas are being used to hire low-paid tech workers from overseas, Musk conceded that the program is “broken.”

“Easily fixed by raising the minimum salary significantly and adding a yearly cost for maintaining the H1-B, making it materially more expensive to hire from overseas than domestically,” he said.

“I’ve been very clear that the program is broken and needs major reform,” he added. “I’m confident that the changes made in the @realDonaldTrump administration will make America much stronger.”

However, Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in South Africa who has used an H-1B visa himself, has rattled MAGA hardliners and less impressionable X users, who haven’t forgotten his recent meltdown. “Deport Elon Musk to India,” one user joked, referencing the fact that Indian nationals benefit from the H-1B program. “How’s the war going,” comedian Sam Hyde asked sarcastically.

Political analysist Dominic Michael Tripi said: “Elon Musk is pushing globalist ideologies conveniently wrapped in an American Flag.”

His point reflects the sentiment shared by MAGA purists that the H-1B visa favors foreign workers over Americans. In the fiscal year 2023, Indians accounted for 72.3% of the total H-1B approvals. This was partly the reason that Trump’s AI advisor Sriram Krishnan took some heat from Republican voices, prompting Vivek Ramaswamy and Musk to back him—inadvertently starting the MAGA civil war.

Another user said that “the tech right just wants a truce so they can survive the blowback.”

“Musk is not going to back down, he will defend this to the end,” another said, while one person declared “this is war.”

As part of his simmering down phase, Musk asked X users to post more “positive” content. “Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform,” he said.

Among the reams of dog pictures and general Elon-fawning, not everyone was convinced by his attempted 180.

In response, one user wrote: “Bro you spent Christmas calling Americans subhuman retards and declaring you would purge all MAGA loyalists from the America First movement that you bought 6 months ago because we are racists for not letting you import millions of Indians.”

A second shared a screenshot of Musk’s wild “F--- YOURSELF in the face” comment and added: “Me when someone says to post more ‘positive, beautiful, or informative content.’”

DOGE co-head Vivek Ramaswamy has also softened his tone after his Boxing Day slam on American culture. He recently re-shared comments he made last year in which he pledged to “gut” the H-1B program.

Elon Musk came to the U.S. in 1992 to study at the University of Pennsylvania, and later became a citizen in 2002.

Musk, who is also a Canadian citizen through his mother, earned bachelor’s degrees in economics and physics before he moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford, but never enrolled in classes.

He has previously stated that his transition from student to entrepreneur was a “legal grey area,” but the Washington Post reported in October that Musk was almost certainly working in the U.S. without correct authorization for a period in 1995.

The Post cited former business associates, court records and company documents when claiming the young tech whizz didn’t have the legal right to work while building the company that became Zip2.

And despite his success—he sold Zip2 for $300 million in 1999—legal experts claimed that leaving school left Musk without a legal basis to remain in the country.

Leon Fresco, a former Justice Department immigration litigator, warned: “If you do anything that helps to facilitate revenue creation, such as design code or try to make sales in furtherance of revenue creation, then you’re in trouble.”

The current annual statutory cap is 65,000 visas, with 20,000 additional visas for foreign professionals who graduate with a master’s degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution of higher learning.

During the Trump administration, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services denied a larger percentage of H-1B petitions than in the preceding four years. For fiscal year 2023, the Office of Homeland Security Statistics reports that 755,020 people were admitted to the United States in H-1B status.