For Elon and TikTok, It's Payback Time
Trump gets a quarter-billion dollars for his campaign from one, and "billions and billions" of online support from the other. How do you think he's going to rule on the many issues affecting them?
Okay, did you really think Donald Trump would rule against the guy who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to elect him on an issue involving immigrants, or allow a company to be banned in the U.S. after they carried “billions and billions” of views supporting him?
This is Donald Trump, we’re talking about here! The first priority for him will always be what’s best for him, not for any of us. It’s something that many of the people who voted for him apparently failed to take into consideration.
He owes Elon Musk, the world’s richest Trump supporter, and I suspect he wants to keep Musk’s billions by his side. And he believes the Chinese-owned online app TikTok, with maybe 170 million or so Americans signed up, will help secure a connection with younger Americans moving forward. About 70% of TikTok’s audience are age 34 or under.
The TikTok Issue
TikTok, in case you’ve been living under a rock, is an online app where, it seems. every young person on the planet is either busting out dance moves or delivering fiery activist rants.
It can certainly be amusing. But it also can be a bit frightening, with young people using it to challenge each other to take dangerous actions. At the same time, it’s increasingly considered a legit news source by the young, even though there’s no editorial oversight, so it’s prone to the spread of misinformation. Its short-video format can oversimplify complex issues and, like many social media sites, the app’s algorithm can limit exposure to diverse perspectives.
Bottom line: It’s pretty much the perfect platform for Trump. His own social media site is tiny in comparison, and largely draws his base followers..
Lawmakers recently passed legislation requiring that TikTok either be sold or banned in the U.S. The reason: The app is owned by a China-based company. That means it must comply with China’s national intelligence law mandating support, assistance and cooperation for “state intelligence work.”
As a result, federal lawmakers worry the owners will provide the Chinese government any information requested, including sensitive data collected on American users that can include the sons and daughters of highly-placed parents.
This is an issue that’s been bouncing around for awhile, and Trump previously factored in on it.
On July 31, 2020, Trump, then still president, ordered China's ByteDance to divest ownership of the app, and said he would shut down its U.S. operations through executive action in a month if the company didn’t comply. But his executive order soon ran into legal problems, and Trump left office before his order could be carried out.
This March, however, Trump sang a different tune after seeing the response to his campaign on TikTok, even though it was nowhere near the “billions and billions” he cites.
He now says that while TikTok’s national security and data privacy concerns should be addressed (in normal Trump fashion, he didn’t suggest how), banning it would empower the competitive site Facebook, which he labeled as the "enemy of the people." There’s no end, by the way, to the number of people and organizations he’s graced with this label.
TikTok has now taken the legislation potentially banning it to the U.S. Supreme Court for a ruling, and Trump’s attorneys last week filed a brief in which he stated that he opposes the ban and asks for time to resolve the dispute via political negotiations.
My bet is he gets it, what’s yours? Meanwhile, folks in China’s government responsible for their national intelligence are likely smirking in response.
Now, On to Elon
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man, worth a reported $50 billion as of late November. The $277 million Elon Musk spent to support Trump’s election made Musk the largest single donor to either party. At the same time, Musk owns X, the former Twitter, and he’s essentially turned that app into a major megaphone in support of Trump.
Let’s stop here and think about this for a moment. The man spent $277 million to get Trump on his side. Why so? Maybe it’s because he’s tied to numerous government contracts supporting his companies, and seems to be constantly battling federal regulators over his treatment of labor and the environment.
Republicans defend him by saying he’s so rich he doesn’t have to care about such things. But narcissists — like Trump and Musk — feel they deserve special treatment and expects they to be recognized as superior beings. Having to compete for projects, meet standards and then face regulatory challenges doesn’t fit the profile.
What’s at issue is whether Trump will support so-called H-1B visas for immigrants, a program that the tech industry swears by and hard-line anti-immigration folks want to end, opening a rift in MAGAland.
H-1B visas are short-term visas given to foreign workers hired for U.S. jobs that require “highly specialized knowledge.” The tech industry uses the visas to draw in workers trained as software and hardware engineers, data scientists, system analysts and a wide range of other technical positions. They can also apply in fields like architecture, medicine, education, business, law, theology and the arts.
Musk, not surprisingly, has been rabidly supportive of the visas on X, the social media site he owns.
When someone recently criticized Musk’s H-1B stand on X, he responded, “take a big step back and F--- YOURSELF in the face.” Scary to know that the person who seems to have the most influence over our president-to-be, and who many these days see as a looming shadow president, would respond publicly in this awful manner.
Musk's tweet was directed at more than just one X filer, though. He’s also threatened to “go to war” against hard-liners in the MAGA herd pushing Trump to scrap for the program. The hard-liners — including Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters in the past — have pushed for an all-or nothing immigration profile.
“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less.” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said on his War Room social media site.
Most of those brought in with H-1B visas have advanced degrees, and their families are largely people with money. Individuals from India and China make up about 80% of H-1B visa recipients. Poor black and brown folks from south of the border, who have limited access to higher education and carry little political clout, need not apply.
Oddly, in stating his support for Musk’s signature issue, Trump said he has H-1B recipients working for him at Mar-a-Lago, opening up an obvious question: What do these folks do? Mow the lawn, keep the pool clean, dust those many paintings and pictures of him?
Ken Bensinger, writing in The New York Times yesterday, reported that Trump appears to have only sparingly used the H-1B visa program if at all, according to federal records. Instead, Bensinger wrote, “he has been a frequent and longtime user of the similarly named, but starkly different, H-2B visa program, which is for unskilled workers like gardeners and housekeepers.”
You think Trump knows the difference? You think he cares? The makeup of the H-1B program isn’t at issue for Trump. Musk’s interest in it is.
Keys to the Kingdom
So we now know what $272 million will buy in these United States: A president. We kind of knew that all along, given the amount of money industry lobbyists pour into political campaigns. But this year’s election outcome, with Musk slithering in as a major factor toward the end makes the issue even more disturbing.
The H-1B issue isn’t the only way Trump has supported his $272 million benefactor. Once elected, Trump immediately handed Musk the keys to the kingdom, allowing this myopic multi-billionaire to develop a plan to eviscerate the government services and regulations that aid many of the rest of us — at least the 99.9% of Americans that aren’t billionaires — in many important ways.
We were in for a tough 4 years in any case with Trump in the White House. Musk adds another complicating factor. It will be interesting to see how long these two narcissists can exist in support of each other. There’s already speculation they may quickly become each other’s worst enemy as the administration moves forward.
That is, of course, unless Musk up and buys Greenland for Trump. He could easily offer $1 million each to the 57,000 folks who live there if they vote to declare full independence from Denmark, and then bow to the U.S. Heck, he pulled that scam in the election to motivate Trump voters.
That’ll get tricky, of course, since Denmark has proudly controlled the massive, snow-covered island since it was a colony in 1721, but who knows these days. What do you think?
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I can’t sign off on this column without mentioning my sadness about the death of Jimmy Carter at the age of 100, and the extraordinary history of his life, both as president and afterward. In remembering him, we can’t help but compare the virtue of this man vs. the lack of this character strength in our president-elect.
God bless, Jimmy Carter, God bless.