Donald Trump has yet to move back into the White House and already fissures are opening in his coalition, amid squabbling between Elon Musk and his Silicon Valley "tech bros" and his hardcore Republican backers.
At the heart of the internecine sniping is Trump's central election issue -- immigration -- and the H1-B visas that allow companies to bring foreigners with specific qualifications to the United States.
The permits are widely used in Silicon Valley, and Musk -- who himself came to the United States from South Africa on an H1-B -- is a fervent advocate.
The world's richest man, who bankrolled Trump's election campaign and has become a close advisor, posted on X Thursday that welcoming elite engineering talent from abroad was "essential for America to keep winning."
Vivek Ramaswamy, appointed by Trump as Musk's co-chair on a new advisory board on government efficiency, suggested that companies prefer foreign workers because they lack an "American culture," which he said venerates mediocrity.
"A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," he posted, warning that, without a change in attitude, "we'll have our asses handed to us by China."
Skepticism over the benefits of immigration is a hallmark of Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement and the billionaires' remarks angered immigration hawks who accused them of ignoring US achievements in technological innovation.
Incoming White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted a 2020 speech in which Trump marveled at the American "culture" that had "harnessed electricity, split the atom, and gave the world the telephone and the Internet."
The post appeared calculated to remind critics that Trump won November's election on a platform of getting tough on immigration and boosting American manufacturing.
But it was Michael Faraday, an English scientist, who discovered that an electric current could be produced by passing a magnet through a copper wire and Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander, who first split the atom.
And Alexander Graham Bell may have died a US citizen but he was a British subject in Canada when he invented the telephone.
Trump voiced opposition to H1-B visas during his successful first run for the White House in 2016, calling them "unfair for our workers" while acknowledging that he used foreign labor in his own businesses.
The Republican placed restrictions on the system when he took office, but the curbs were lifted by President Joe Biden.
- 'Musk vs MAGA' -
Trump is known for enjoying the gladiatorial spectacle when conflict breaks out in his inner circle. He has been conspicuously silent during the hostilities that Politico characterized as "Musk vs MAGA."
Many MAGA figures have been agitating for a complete closure of America's borders while the problem of illegal entries is tackled, and hoping for a steer from Trump that would reassure them that he remains firm in his "America First" stance.
For some long-time loyalists, Silicon Valley has already inserted itself too deeply into MAGA politics.
"We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid's gender -- and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline," said Matt Gaetz, the scandal-hit congressman forced to withdraw after being nominated by Trump to run the Justice Department.
"We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy."
When Musk almost single-handedly blew up a deal painstakingly hammered out between Democrats and Republicans to set the 2025 federal budget, Democrats used "President Musk" to mock Trump, who is famously sensitive about being upstaged.
It remains to be seen whether these cracks can be smoothed out or if they are a portent of further strife, but critics point to the chaos in Trump's first term as a potential indicator.
"Looking forward to the inevitable divorce between President Trump and Big Tech," said far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a MAGA figure with so much influence that she had a seat on Trump's plane during the campaign.
"We have to protect President Trump from the technocrats."
Loomer has subsequently complained of censorship after she was stripped of her paying subscribers on X, which is owned by Musk.
"Full censorship of my account simply because I called out H1B visas," she posted.
"This is anti-American behavior by tech oligarchs. What happened to free speech?"