The painfully narrow win for Donald Trump-supported Mike Johnson in the race for the Speakership of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is an indication that the President-elect may be facing problems with extreme elements of his own party in the months ahead.
It is quite possible that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement that he created is leaving Trump behind in its ruthless race to create a different kind of society – one rooted in isolationism and a deep distrust of anyone that does not wholly subscribe to its Judo-Christian values.
It is playing out in the war of words between one-time Trump strategist Steve Bannon (pictured) and the President-elect’s “favourite billionaire” Elon Musk.
Musk wants highly-skilled foreign workers to be exempt from Trump’s proposed mass deportation of immigrants, claiming they are needed in his high-tech Tesla and SpaceX industries.
This is anathema to Bannon who claims it is outrageous to suggest Americans are not capable of doing these jobs. Musk and ally, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswany have countered this, with Ramaswany claiming the “dumbed-down” television culture since the 1990s is responsible for why Americans cannot compete with brainy foreigners.
Musk went further, using the ugly “retarded” slur on his X platform before deleting it amid mounting outrage.
In another possibly significant development, Bannon has started to use religious terminology in relation to MAGA, calling Musk, Ramaswany and other new Trump supporters from the tech world as “recent converts”.
“We love converts, but the converts sit back and study for years and years to make sure they understand the faith and understand the nuances of the faith, and understand how they can internalise the faith,” Bannon said.
“Don’t go to the pulpit in your first week and lecture people about the way things are going to be,” he said, before reverting to more secular language “otherwise we’re going to rip your face off”.
Since that exchange MAGA figures have begun to highlight Musk’s South African origins and the fact that Ramaswany has Indian immigrant parents in what is looking like an increasingly unpleasant internal struggle within the Republican ranks.
Meanwhile Bannon, still resentful over his short tenure as an insider in the first Trump White House, is positioning himself as the guardian of the fundamental MAGA faith – possibly putting large segments of true believers at odds with Trump when he grapples with the complex realities of governing.
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