The online beef between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley backers and the more traditionally conservative MAGA base has culminated in Elon Musk allegedly using X to censor his fellow Trump supporters.
Laura Loomer, Gavin Mario Wax, ConservativePAC, and Owen Shroyer all had their X verification badges removed Thursday night after criticizing Musk’s stances on labor and immigration earlier in the day.
“All of our influencers have now lost verification status, as well as our own page,” the Trump-supporting ConservativePAC wrote. “Our brand did nothing. We spoke out against HB1 visas and it appears that @elonmusk intentionally shut us down? Is this the new status quo from America’s ‘most free’ social media platform?”
“I mean right after @elonmusk called me a troll today, my account verification was taken away, my subscriptions were deactivated and I was banned from being able to buy premium even though I was already paying for premium,” said Loomer. “Clearly retaliation.”
“My verification badge is now under review. Weird! Didn’t change anything,” said Gavin Mario Wax, another vocal critic of H-1B visas.
This all comes after Musk and fellow Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy engaged in some post-Christmas infighting with conservatives about whether Asian immigrants on H-1B work visas or pure corn-fed Americans would make better SpaceX employees.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy said in a long, rambling post Thursday on X. “A culture that venerates Cory from ‘Boy Meets World,’ or Zach & Slater over Screech in ‘Saved by the Bell,’ or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in ‘Family Matters,’ will not produce the best engineers.”
Musk expressed similar sentiments, noting that “the number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” before soon getting into a fight with his own followers about the issue.
And apparently, the oligarch has thin skin when it comes to his critics.
“Insane that blue checks are being removed from accounts that have been vocal in their criticism of the H1B racket. Horrible look,” conservative influencer Wax said in a separate post. “I’ve supported Elon and X. Anyone who was at the @NYYRC gala can attest that I dedicated a large portion of my speech to praising Elon. Sad!”
This racialized internal strife has yet to be commented on by President-elect Trump, and may spell trouble for the future of DOGE, Musk, and Ramaswamy.
