The controversy Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami initiated over their immigration policy preferences (they like H-1B visas for skilled labor) has revealed that they lack awareness about political protocol and are disconnected from the ultra-sensitive nature of President Trump’s massive base.
MAGA is skittish. Ramaswami and Musk, having joined the team only recently, seem to be unaware of the enormous distress that the Trump-supporting public has endured for eight long years. These have been years during which they witnessed betrayal and skullduggery, unimagined viciousness, deceit, vast instruments of manipulation, and, worst of all, a complete lack of trustworthiness even amongst Trump’s most intimate and relied-upon colleagues and confidants.
What the outsider misses is the personal impact that these attacks and betrayals have had on Trump’s supporters. very betrayal, every Trojan horse, was not seen as happening to a distant politician seated on a gilded throne. Trump’s base felt all these things as a visceral gut punch. It hurt them intimately and deeply. No one winced or cried out, but the pain and anguish they felt were real, as if these betrayals and attacks were directed at them personally.
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They felt and still feel this way, not due to his outward traits, but because Trump is the only person in decades who demonstrably had their back, delivered on his promises, and endured fearlessly on their behalf, and in so many ways gained their trust. And just as Trump regularly speaks of love, they grew, through a long and arduous relationship, to genuinely love the man—quirks and all.
The loyal public’s seemingly endless endurance as they watched a loved and trusted “good guy” continually assailed in the ugliest of ways engendered not only staunch support for the maligned President but a skittish distrust of everyone around him.
Vivek and Elon have damaged that trust. Not because they strayed outside their government brief, i.e., the DOGE agenda, but because the base now feels that these men could be just two more in the long line of turncoats who have jeopardized Trump’s success. No matter how much sense these two may make, no matter how entitled to express themselves they may be, they have opened themselves to questions about their motives, vested interests, trustworthiness, and, worst of all, whether they can genuinely carry out Trump’s vision.
The arguments about whether their actions are valid right now are an overlying factor, deriving from a much deeper, profound emotional response, one that might be compared to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The base has been ‘hit’ so many times that the mere whiff of another possible assault sends them into a frenzy of distrust.
Musk and Ramaswamy may also be miscalculating the nature of Trump’s base. Both have spent their business lives around leftists. Their expectation may be that Trump’s base is monolithic and will move as a single unit wherever their leaders direct them.
Not so with Trump’s rabble-rousers. Although they respect and support those who will help their fearless favored representative, they will, in an instant, argue with a turncoat and each other. They’ll readily drag out horrible facts and receipts that, as we have seen in the past few days, reveal the inconsistencies of an argument. exposing with documentation the depth of corruption hiding behind an ostensibly rational argument.
Trump’s supporters aren’t idiots and bottom feeders or any of the other pejoratives Democrats heap upon them. Instead, they are a variety of united people, patient, steadfast in their support of a single man and an expansive ideal, including many ultra-intelligent and brave men and women, each formidable in their own way. They are not a ‘mob’ to be trifled with.
Currently, many MAGA supporters are genuinely concerned that very real forces are conspiring to prevent Trump from being inaugurated or, once inaugurated, from carrying out his promises. They ask: how does an issue like this H-1B visa immigration debate help their prime and most immediate objectives? Or does it instead add grist to the mill of that huge and powerful mechanism that constantly intrigues to bring about the good President’s downfall?
There will never be an opportune time for seemingly powerful political allies to reveal their lack of political acumen or possible ulterior motives. However, especially now, they inflicted real and lasting harm to their credibility for reasons so personal to Trump’s supporters that it may well be incomprehensible to Messrs. Musk and Ramaswami, despite all their good intentions.