Maga tensions spark fears of chaos in Trump White House

WASHINGTON – With President-elect Donald Trump’s allies in open warfare ahead of his inauguration, analysts see the latest hostilities between his billionaire backers and working-class base as a preview of tensions that threaten to shatter his fragile coalition.

The furore over whether to welcome skilled foreign workers has exposed deep fault lines between the hardcore immigration hawks who have been with Trump from the start and the “tech bros” who spent a fortune getting the Republican re-elected.

Threatening to grow into an irreparable schism, the row has prompted leading lights in Trump’s Maga (Make America Great Again) crusade to highlight what they see as the absurdity of a supposedly populist movement where the mega-rich call the shots.

“I think this most recent war of words between traditional Maga and big-tech Maga was an opening salvo in a long-running battle over the future of the Maga movement,” political analyst Flavio Hickel told AFP.

Leading the Silicon Valley faction is billionaire Elon Musk, the South African-born SpaceX and Tesla boss, who shelled out at least US$250 million (S$342.7 million) to bankroll the Trump campaign, even as the candidate pushed scare stories about a migrant-led crime wave that never was.

Mr Musk’s money was a boon, but the world’s richest man found himself a target of Maga after supporting visas for skilled foreigners, apparently unaware that his new allies’ anti-immigrant animus extends to his own employment practices.

‘Oligarchs v nativists’

Assistant Professor Hickel characterised Mr Musk, Mr Vivek Ramaswamy and several other tech tycoons that Trump has tapped in advisory roles as “ideologically libertarian” and favouring traditional conservative priorities like balanced budgets and expansive legal immigration.

“Traditional Maga seems to care little about the budget and found Trump’s nativism to be the most appealing feature of his candidacies,” Prof Hickel, who teaches politics at Maryland liberal arts school Washington College, told AFP.

In Maga’s first internal conflagration since November’s election – dubbed “Oligarchs v Nativists” by the US media – Mr Musk called his critics among the Trumpist base “contemptible fools” who should be rooted out.

Mr Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist and Maga media star, retaliated with a threat on his War Room podcast to “rip (Musk’s) face off” on New Year’s Eve, warning the tycoon not to “go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people”.

Echoing concerns that Trump’s billionaire supporters have never really understood his appeal to blue-collar voters, Mr Bannon told Mr Musk and other “recent converts” to “sit back and study” Maga’s stance on keeping US jobs for Americans.

Mr Bannon and others have demanded “reparations” from Silicon Valley for cutting Americans out of jobs. The Maga rabble-rouser said the visa issue is “central to the way they gutted the middle class in this country”.

‘Bad politics’

Trump – whose own personal wealth was recently estimated at US$5.5 billion – took Silicon Valley’s side, astonishing many of his own supporters and even drawing criticism from moderates like his former UN ambassador, Ms Nikki Haley.

Yet, Professor Donald Nieman, a political analyst at Binghamton University in New York state, gives Trump credit for assembling a broader coalition than in the past, even if that makes conflict more likely.

“He knows he has to deliver on the economy – the issue that brought him to the White House – so kicking the tech sector in the teeth is bad politics,” Prof Nieman told AFP.

Some analysts predict that the contretemps will end badly for Mr Musk, with Trump keenly aware that his real power has always resided in his working-class support.

Others think the lure of Silicon Valley lucre may have changed Maga permanently, and that Trump – ever the pragmatist – will lead his base to the centre rather than allowing his base to drag him to the right.

Mr Jeff Le, who served as deputy Cabinet secretary for former California governor Jerry Brown, worked closely with the tech sector on visa reform and coordinated negotiations between his state and the first Trump administration.

“The tension between Mr Musk, Mr Ramaswamy... (and) Mr Bannon and the Maga wing represents significant philosophical differences,” he said.

“However, if Trump continues to emphasise other tools for immigration reform... such as expanded judicial powers, more aggressive ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations and border security, his base will likely stick with Trump.” AFP