President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff has ordered his Cabinet picks not to post on social media without approval from the transition team.
The orders come amid an increasingly vicious MAGA civil war over visas for skilled immigrants.
“While this instruction has been delivered previously, I am reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself,” soon-to-be Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said in a memo, according to The New York Post. “Accordingly, all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts without prior approval of the incoming White House counsel.”
It remains unclear what specifically led to the memo being issued now, but Senate confirmation hearings are set to begin early next year just as the MAGA war is escalating.
ADVERTISEMENT
Billionaire Trump-backer Elon Musk has vowed he will “go to war” with MAGA Republicans over protecting H-1B visas that allow skilled foreigners to fill significant roles in the tech industry, including in Musk businesses, for up to six years.
The South African-born Musk has argued that foreign talent is needed in the tech industry, and endorsed a post on X referring to American workers as “re***ded” (which he has since deleted).
Trump backer and right-wing gadfly Laura Loomer, meanwhile, has attacked Musk on his stance on X, and called on the president-elect to fulfill his promises to “remove the H-1B visas.” She lashed Musk on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Monday as a “welfare queen” who has collected billions of dollars in subsidies from American taxpayers.
Bannon, Trump’s one-time White House strategist, demanded “reparations” on the program from Musk and other tech leaders for stealing jobs from Americans to give them to H-B1 immigrants.
Trump is supporting Musk’s position, to the outrage of many of his supporters who want American jobs, especially top-paying work, for Americans, as they were led to believe Trump supported. Trump lauded the use of H-1B visas on Saturday even as he has slammed them in the past as being “very bad” and “unfair” to Americans.
ADVERTISEMENT
Musk is set to run the outside commission known as the Department of Government Efficiency alongside 2024 Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy also strongly supports the H-1B visas, arguing that American culture is the reason Americans have a hard time competing with skilled foreign employees in the tech industry.
“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 wrote in a post on X.
The ugly visa battle is hardly the only thing on lawmakers’ minds ahead of Cabinet position hearings.
Some Democratic senators are frantically working to oppose some of Trump’s picks even as they have limited power to stop their confirmations when the new Republican majority in the upper chamber takes hold. Confirmations for the cabinet only need a simple majority to go through. This means that Democrats need to peel off some Republican votes to stop any of Trump’s cabinet picks.
ADVERTISEMENT
There are a number of cabinet picks who face increased scrutiny, including Pete Hegseth to head the Department of Defense, Kash Patel to be FBI director, anti-vaxxer Robert Kennedy Jr. to take charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as Tulsi Gabbard, whom Trump has selected to be his director of national intelligence.
David Warrington is set to be the next White House counsel; he has been put in charge of monitoring the nominees’ social media use. Warrington served as the top lawyer on the Trump campaign.
“Dave has represented me well as my personal attorney, and as General Counsel for my Presidential Campaign. He is an esteemed lawyer and Conservative leader,” Trump said of Warrington.
EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel
