Far-right voters are waking up to the fact that Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes don’t have voters at the forefront of their mind.
White supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes had a harsh message for his followers on Thursday, pitching that conservative leadership won’t care about their base until it benefits their odds of staying in power.
“Sorry. Thank you for your vote, now go fuck yourself,” Fuentes said. “That’s the message from the Republican Party for the next four, eight, 16, 100, 1,000 years. Thank you for your vote, now go fuck off until the next election.”
Nick Fuentes: “Sorry. Thank you for your vote. Now go fvck yourself— that’s the message from the Republican Party.” pic.twitter.com/FNXW3DBVkY
— Ron Smith (@Ronxyz00) January 2, 2025
Fuentes briefly pulled his support from Trump in August, writing on X that he was declaring a “groyper war” on the Republican nominee. Fuentes explained that he and his far-right squad of online trolls “support Trump” but that they viewed his 2024 campaign as being “hijacked” by lobbyists, consultants, and donors that had aided Trump’s 2016 Republican opponents. At the time, Fuentes believed they were “blowing it.”
In recent weeks, Fuentes has been vocal about opposing the H-1B visa work program, which Elon Musk has ardently defended as a solution to a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent” in the United States.
Opponents of the immigration program—and Musk’s position—claim that the H-1B visa disincentivizes companies to hire American labor.
On Thursday, that stance shockingly found Fuentes aligned with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who called out Musk and other Silicon Valley billionaires for over-leveraging the work visa program to dump good-paying American jobs in favor of absurdly underpaid foreign labor.
In a formal statement, Sanders’s office noted that in 2022 and 2023, “the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers.”
Fuentes reshared the statement on X, writing, “Bernie Sanders is right. Elon and Trump are wrong.”
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House Speaker Mike Johnson has a slim shot at keeping his gavel Friday, as dozens of Republicans reportedly remain uncommitted to supporting the staunch ally of President-elect Donald Trump.
Representative Thomas Massie vowed Thursday night that he wouldn’t vote for Johnson, even under threat of torture.
During an interview on One America News’s The Matt Gaetz Show, Massie was asked by the titular former congressman and failed attorney general nominee whether an opportunity to lead a committee might sway him to support the embattled speaker.
“Oh no, you can pull all my fingernails out, you can shove bamboo up in them, you can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow,” Massie declared.
Massie is among several Republicans to voice their concerns about Johnson, whose chaotic efforts to pass government spending legislation last month led several small government–type Republicans to question whether he is truly invested in gutting the federal government.
Massie’s defection is a big deal: Assuming that everyone is present and voting, Johnson can only afford to lose one Republican vote, according to The Hill. There are currently more than a dozen lawmakers who signaled last week that they weren’t yet committed to supporting Johnson, including Representatives Chip Roy, Victoria Spartz, Rich McCormick, and Andy Harris.
Johnson seems to remain optimistic about his chances. When asked Friday morning whether he thought he would win the first ballot, which is set to take place at noon, Johnson replied, “I think so.”
Trump published marching orders for Republicans on Truth Social Friday, urging them to support Johnson but mostly complimenting himself.
“Good luck today for Speaker Mike Johnson, a fine man of great ability, who is very close to having 100% support,” Trump wrote. “A win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party, and yet another acknowledgment of our 129 year most consequential Presidential Election!!—A BIG AFFIRMATION, INDEED. MAGA!”
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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has thrown himself into the H-1B visa feud between Elon Musk and the far-right’s MAGA acolytes.
Musk and some of Donald Trump’s more ardent supporters have gone head-to-head over the last several weeks, with the world’s richest man arguing that the work visa program offers a solution to a “permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent” in the United States. Opponents of the immigration program—and Musk’s position—claim that the H-1B visa disincentivizes companies to hire American labor. Some of the most vocal opponents are people such as “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, who probably aren’t happy that some of the visa recipients aren’t white.
But on Thursday, Sanders pointed out a quiet, fundamental catch to the Silicon Valley leader’s argument: Musk’s business interests dramatically benefit from open access to inhumanely cheap labor.
“Elon Musk is wrong,” Sanders posted on X. “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.
“The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make,” he said.
In a formal statement, Sanders’s office noted that in 2022 and 2023, “the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers.
“There are estimates that as many as 33 percent of all new Information Technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers,” the statement reads. “Further, according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions.”
The H-1B visa program has an annual cap set by Congress, admitting 65,000 foreign workers per year. In 2023, it was estimated that there were more than 700,000 H-1B visa holders in the U.S., according to data from the American Immigration Council.
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The man who allegedly detonated fireworks inside a Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, was reportedly a supporter of the president-elect.
Law enforcement officials identified Matthew Alan Livelsberger, a 37-year-old Green Beret, as the deceased driver of the Cybertruck in Wednesday’s incident, according to CNN.
A senior law enforcement official told The Daily Beast Thursday that Livelsberger was a “big” Donald Trump supporter, a fact that had been uncovered through conversations with Livelsberger’s family and loved ones.
Dean Livelsberger, the uncle of the deceased, told The Independent Thursday that his nephew “loved” Trump.
“He used to have all patriotic stuff on Facebook, he was 100 percent loving the country,” said Dean Livelsberger.
“He loved Trump. He was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American. It’s one of the reasons he was in Special Forces for so many years. It wasn’t just one tour of duty,” he added. Livelsberger had served as an operations master sergeant in the Army Special Forces, on active duty in Germany, but was on leave at the time of his death, three officials told CNN.
Online, Livelsberger once criticized John Bolton, Trump’s ex-national security adviser, who wrote a scathing rebuke of his former boss in his memoir.
“Bet Bolton got a hefty chunk from the DNC and other slimy donors to put the book out,” Livelsberger wrote in a Facebook comment under an article about Bolton, according to The Daily Beast.
While the symbolic nature of the incident appears to refer to the partnership between the president-elect and Elon Musk, Livelsberger’s motive is still unknown. Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill suggested Thursday that the incident, which injured seven people, was likely a suicide.
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