TBD | Musk vs. MAGA

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate

News, Daily News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On Christmas Eve a fracas erupted on X, when Elon Musk posted in favor of H1-B visas for specialized and high-skill workers and was met with anger from the MAGA base who view the visas as a way for immigrants to take American jobs. Guest: Ryan Mac, tech reporter for The New York Times and the coauthor of the book “Character Limit How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.” Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Ethan Oberman, Patrick Fort, and Cheyna Roth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.
0:04.8	Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand.
0:12.5	Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time.
0:17.5	From startups to scaleups, online, in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for
0:22.9	entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
0:29.9	Just a quick heads up. There is some swearing in this episode. Okay, here's the show. Over the Christmas holiday, right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Lumer was busy tweeting.
0:51.7	It started with essentially Laura Lumer's aggression towards this nomination for an AI policy advisory job by the incoming Trump administration of this guy, Sri Ram Krishna.
1:06.2	That's Ryan Mack, who covers tech for the New York Times.
1:10.0	Sri Ram Krishna is a venture capitalist.
1:12.4	He's worked at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter.
1:15.5	And Ryan says he's pretty close to David Sachs and Elon Musk.
1:19.4	He was also born in India, which is where Laura Lumer comes in.
1:23.9	And she starts to raise her concerns that he is someone who was born in India,
1:30.9	who has supported the use of H-1B visas, and pushed this idea that he was hoping to raise the
1:38.0	cap of H-1B, so this idea of increasing the number of H-1B visas to the U.S.
1:47.5	Which, to be clear, is not something he's talked about.
1:50.7	H-1B visas are sometimes known as skilled worker visas.
1:54.7	We will get deep into them soon.
1:57.0	Suffice to say, Laura Lumer was mad online, and she compared tech billionaires, hint-hant Elon Musk, to a termite infestation.
2:06.5	This is the narrative that set in among her supporters and really drove weeks-long conversation about H-1Bs that has split the MAGA party.
2:17.5	I want to dig deeper into H-1Bs, but I think we also got to acknowledge the Elon Musk
2:24.8	Tropic Thunder meme tweet, which, among other things, says the reason I'm in America with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H-1B.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.