The honeymoon may be over for Donald Trump’s coalition, as the billionaires and bigots are now at open war with one another over immigration and H-1B visas, and Elon Musk called some Trumpers “contemptible fools.”

So how did you spend your Christmas holiday week? Dinners and gifts with family? Watching sports or movies? Basking in the holiday glow? If you are a public figure who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election, you’ve probably spent your holiday week furiously pounding your keyboard in knock-down, drag-out Twitter fights in what the Washington Post is calling the “A MAGA ‘Civil War’ on X between [Elon] Musk and the far right.”

And Trump’s coalition of billionaire oligarchs and blue-collar racists may be coming apart at the seams before our eyes. Axios reports that Trump government efficiency appointee Vivek Ramaswamy declared over this four-day spat that American culture celebrates “mediocrity over excellence," while as KRON4 points out, Elon Musk himself said those who disagree with Ramaswamy are “contemptible fools [who] must be removed from the Republican Party root and stem.”

This is delicious, so let’s dive in.

This Twitter skirmish started on Christmas Eve, not long after Trump appointed Andreessen Horowitz partner Sriram Krishnan to head the new administration's AI policy. Krishnan, as you see, is a brown-skinned man, and he was not born in the US. So the MAGA response to this, obviously, was more than a tad bit racist.

Irked by the blowback, Vivek Ramaswamy responded with the lengthy rant (partially seen above) and declared “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.” That insult to American culture would obviously infuriate any MAGA type.

But lest you think Ramaswamy would pivot this to some sort of coherent and intelligent argument, he follows this up by saying “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.”

Yes, he is citing Saved by the Bell and Family Matters to make what he thinks is an astute argument about the global economy. Should you need any more proof that there is absolutely no correlation between wealth and intelligence in tech industry leadership.

Some different pushback comes from Ramaswamy’s former presidential primary rival Nikki Haley, who crystallizes an argument that "We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers," which is a little weird coming from Haley given that both of her parents are immigrants from India.

The more batshit insane pushback comes from notorious racist wingut Laura Loomer. She’s been tweeting about every three minutes nonstop since this brouhaha started Tuesday, in tweets far too numerous to detail. But the gist — and her arguments have gotten some very serious traction on Elon’s Xitter — is that “The Big Tech divorce is coming soon” to separate the tech billionaires from the rank-and-file MAGA.

And it does credibly appear, for whatever reason, that Loomer’s account has had some capabilities on Xitter withdrawn over the course of this dispute. Did so-called “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk actually censor one of MAGA’s most prominent online nutjobs, because he feared her arguments against him were catching on? It wouldn't be the first time Musk censored someone.

SFist has linked a lot of reprehensible right-wing lunatics in this post. But we have not yet linked to Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams. He of course has chimed in too, and Musk responded, providing (thus far) the cherry on top of this all-out war between conservative assholes.

Adams sympathetically retweeted a remark from Democratic political consultant Neera Tanden on the anti-Indian backlash. And Elon Musk responded with a phrase that just might haunt him from the remainder of his dalliance into Republican politics, saying, “those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.”

Was this Elon Musk’s “basket of deplorables” moment? He did just call a significant percentage of Trump’s base “contemptible fools.” Yes, the out-of-power Democratic Party is still searching for a political strategy for Trump 2.0. But for now, the best strategy may to just stand back and let them continue shooting in their circular firing squad.

Related: Elon Musk Was In US as an Illegal Immigrant In 1995, According to Washington Post Report [SFist]

Image: BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS - NOVEMBER 19: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk, a Trump confidante, has been tapped to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency alongside former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)