The BBC reports that Vivek Ramaswamy, tapped by President-Elect Trump to slash government spending, claimed American culture is to blame for employers hiring skilled foreign workers through the H-1B temporary worker visas.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” Ramaswamy wrote in a long X post that argued that foreign workers improve the US economy.  “Taking aim at American culture, Ramaswamy originally wrote: `A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian [the top student in a class], will not produce the best engineers.’

After being pilloried online by anti-immigration Trump supporters, Ramaswamy returned to X to post that he believed `the H-1B system is badly broken & should be replaced.’

The disagreement led to a row online over the holidays, as mainstream Republicans and far-right influencers joined in criticising Ramaswamy and other wealthy figures in Trump’s inner circle.”

“If we are going to have a throwdown, let’s have it now,”  Trump supporter Steve Bannon said on his podcast on Friday. He went on to call the Republican claims of support of the H-1B program a “total scam.”

But Ramaswamy’s perceived view of skilled worker visas was backed by Elon Musk.  Musk defended the H-1B visa programme as attracting the “top ~0.1%” of engineering talent.”

“Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct,” he tweeted.