MAGAReport 1/3/25 - Reconciling Trump Loyalty
How MAGAs handle Trump being wrong through the lens of immigration and citizenship
Sometimes, Trump says something that is so obviously wrong, even his most loyal supporters can’t argue that it’s correct.
If you were very closely following the unfolding of news around the tragedy in New Orleans this week, you would have seen that Trump made this post on TruthSocial, claiming that the attack was a result of “open borders”. He would have known at the time that the perpetrator was born in Texas and had served in the US Army, but he posted this anyway.
Moments like this are interesting ones on the forums. How do people whose identity is rooted in support for Trump react when he says something so obviously factually incorrect?
We must situate this moment in the Great MAGA Divide over H1B visas (which I wrote about last week). Almost universally, Trump’s core online supporters are angry that Trump sided with Musk in support of the H1B visa program. Being angry at Trump is uncomfortable for them; “Be here for MAGA and Trump” is literally one of the forum rules. Yet these online MAGA forums are firmly anti-immigrant, and Trump’s long-standing anti-immigration stance is a big part of his appeal. This current uncomfortable moment informs a lot of the responses we see to the TruthSocial post about New Orleans.
Many responses criticize H1B visas. H1B has nothing to do with the New Orleans attack, but there is something really interesting about this rhetorical approach. Trump blames open borders for what happened in New Orleans. The anti-H1B crowd turns to Trump and says, “We agree with you that open borders are bad. So be consistent about it and withdraw support for H1Bs, too!” It lets them maintain loyalty to Trump through the immigration issue, alleviating some of the cognitive discomfort originating out of the H1B debate, while also allowing them to continue expressing dissatisfaction with Trump on that visa issue. They desperately want him to adopt an anti-visa stance and fall back in line with the vision they have of him; disagreement with Trump is profoundly uncomfortable in this community. His anti-immigrant stance in the TruthSocial post gives them hope that maybe the H1B thing is a temporary lapse in judgment. Here are some of those comments:
Hopefully the radical Muslim extremists don't figure out h1-b's.
Wouldn't GEOTUS [FROM JEN: this stands for “God Emperor of the United States” and is how many of these posters refer to Trump] be embarrassed...
The terror cells here will use h1b1 to import lower cost terrorists at pennies on the dollar.
Letting in Islamists under H1B isn’t any better.
Can we do something about H-1B economic terr*rism also?
Remove H1B thugs
Poojews. They're called poojews.
End H1B then trump
psst.. mr president, H1B sucks
Ok Mr. Hb1 visa. Wanting to bring as many foreigners here as quickly as possible.
So I guess we need to bring in 20 million more H1-Bs from India since they are experienced in fighting Muslims, but Americans are retards and can F their own face.
A few people did indeed criticize Trump for his NOLA statement:
Is someone going to tell him that these are home grown? We definitely need to deport as much as possible, but that won't stop those here legally or that are citizens.
what a stupid statement knowing these attackers were American citizens AND in our military.
God i wish he would fucking FOCUS
Exactly. It's perfect fodder for the open borders people.
Yep. This isn’t some 4D chess move. He made a retarded statement like a low info boomer does on Facebook
All the media will point to is that he's "uninformed" since both of these terrorists are American born.
And that last comment spurred an interesting back and forth centered around who deserves to be a citizen. One reply to the “American born” comment said “Doesn't mean shit. They're still foreigners and also the open borders led to chaos.” When someone pointed out that, no, they are not foreigners if they are born in the US, another replied “When people come here to squat out a baby on American soil, doesn’t make that baby a US citizen. Birthright citizenship has got to end.”
Birthright citizenship is a big issue for Trump now. He promised to end it despite it literally being in the Constitution. His supporters are using this to spin the interpretation of Trump’s TruthSocial post. Trump may have incorrectly said the attacker was an immigrant, but the commenters argued that the attacker shouldn’t be a citizen. That would make Trump correct! And if Trump’s policy ending birthright citizenship were enacted, then the attacker wouldn’t be a citizen and thus Trump would be right. (Note: I searched for a long time, but we do not seem to know anything about the attacker’s parents, so their status as immigrants is fully speculation on the part of the Trump supporters).
This reflects a broader pattern about MAGA, immigration, and crime. Trump says immigrants are dangerous and responsible for a crime wave (he is wrong about this). Trump and his supporters focus on high-profile crimes committed by immigrants. When new high-profile crimes come along, MAGA wants to believe they were committed by immigrants, too. If Americans committed the crimes, they either ignore it and pretend immigrants did it or argue that the people who commit the crimes should have their citizenship revoked, thereby rendering them criminal illegal aliens.
Some Trump supporters carried this out further and straight-up argued that only people who pass a loyalty test should keep their citizenship:
Time to start thinking about revoking people’s citizenships and deporting people who are technically American.
If you don’t agree with and support President Trump, you’re no longer a citizen and will be deported to countries more in line with your views.
Fuck the constitution. This is about survival.
I don’t care if your third generation American and served a decade in the military.
If you’re dissenting, it’s time to go.
I think Trump himself would like that proposal. RFK Jr. has already introduced a screening test for potential job seekers, and Trump is a man who values loyalty.
All these discussions provide a really sharp picture of how the MAGA community manages their loyalty to Trump amidst his unstable and inconsistent policy positions. On immigration specifically, they desperately want to prove - despite the facts - that immigrants are criminals and criminals are not Americans.