Many high-profile members of Donald Trump’s MAGA base turned on him Tuesday after he defended the H-1B visa program — which helps U.S. companies hire foreign workers for specialized, high-skilled roles — during an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
Ingraham pressed Trump on whether reforming the program, often criticized by the president’s “America First” mantra followers, would be a priority. “If you want to raise wages for American workers,” she said, “you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.”
Trump replied: “Well, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent.”
“We have plenty of talented people here,” Ingraham responded.
“No, you don’t. No, you don’t,” Trump insisted. “You don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory, we’re going to make missiles.’”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he added, further backing the visa whose fee he has sought to dramatically increase to $100,000 annually.
Trump was accused of betraying his MAGA movement with his remark: