Former CNN host Don Lemon mocked the fiercely divided MAGA base for igniting a civil war over immigration after billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump both said they supported H1B visas for skilled foreign workers.
Musk’s support for more skilled immigrants, particularly in tech, angered right-wing immigration hardliners like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer.
"We haven’t fought these battles over years and years and years to allow American citizens of every race, ethnicity, religion, be gutted by the sociopathic overlords in Silicon Valley,” Bannon said on his podcast War Room on Monday.
Even former Trump U.N. ambassador and onetime rival Nikki Haley chimed in to defend American workers. “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture,” Haley wrote in response to Musk’s suggestion that Americans were too dumb to innovate technology.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, had no sympathy for MAGA’s tech bro-nationalist infighting.
"Oh my gosh, I love this," Lemon said in a 40-minute video posted to his YouTube channel. "Now you’re finding out, you dumb f**ing idiots. Now you’re just figuring this s**t out. You’re so f**king stupid, and you deserve it. And you f**king deserve it because you’re so dumb. It’s hypocrisy. So go with me here. Yes. I am gloating over your stupidity and how you were taken. I’m cracking. I’m cackling – I am. You have been co-opted because you’re in a f**ing cult and you don’t even realize it because you have stupid MAGA brain, and you don’t get it. How stupid and dumb are you?"
Though Trump has previously said the country’s H1B program was “very bad,” he sided with Musk in the feud, asserting that he “always believed” in H1B visas. Despite this support for a small population of immigrants, the president-elect’s top priority remains securing the border and enacting a mass deportation of migrant workers.
Such a deportation would have devastating impacts on the American workforce, Lemon pointed out.
“Some farmers say without these workers, they have about two days that they can run their farms," he said. “And then after that, it’s over.”
