Trump Hands Democrats Golden Goose Ahead Of Midterms

President Donald Trump may have handed Democrats a winning issue.

On Monday, Trump claimed foreign workers represent essential “talent,” a quality Americans are lacking. 

NOW – Trump says that H1B immigrants are necessary since there are not plenty of talented Americans.

Laura: “We have plenty of talented people here!”

Trump: “No, you don’t. No, you don’t… No, you don’t have… You don’t have certain talents and you have to… People have to… pic.twitter.com/xEfZRIbKPd

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 12, 2025

“And does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration?” Fox News personality Laura Ingraham asked the president. “Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of foreign workers.” 

“Well, I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent,” said Trump.

“Well, we have plenty of talented people here.”

“No you don’t,” Trump maintained, “No you don’t.”

“We don’t have talented people here?”

“No, you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn. You can’t take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m gonna put you into a factory, we’re gonna make missiles.’”

“How did we ever do it before?” Ingraham questioned.

Indeed. America famously plucked housewives from their homes to manufacture weaponry during World War 2. One propaganda message of that period read: “Can you use an electric mixer? If so, you can learn to operate a drill.” 

Trump’s dismissal of American workers was met with instant and widespread backlash from his base. It seemingly contradicts a statement made in the early months of his first term: “The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay … I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

Mark Mitchell, head pollster at Rasmussen Reports, has been publishing a flood of testimonies sent to him from disgruntled Americans. 

Fan 📨

H1B love is enough for some voters to burn it all down: pic.twitter.com/PZkVPxbcrA

— Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports (@honestpollster) November 12, 2025

“Trump lost the youth vote this week, and likely far beyond that demographic. I spent 30 years at a software company and I watched our company replace 90% of the employees with [H-1Bs]. Most of them lied about their credentials, it was obvious,” begins one message.

“In a 20+-year career in technology and as a consultant for a software company, I have worked with hundreds and hundreds of H-1B tech workers. They are not talented. They certainly are not used to train Americans. In fact, it is the opposite: they arrive untrained, Americans train the H-1Bs, and then the Americans lose their jobs … For 10 years, my normal experience with an H-1B tech worker was that I had to explain the basic skills of thteir jobs to them, over and over. For ones fresh off the plane, and for ones that had been in their jobs for years. They don’t train, and they don’t even learn,” wrote another person.

“I have sincere doubts that President Trump is aware of the political damage he has done to himself and the Right at large. That interview with Laura Ingraham was the political equivalent of head-butting a thermonuclear warhead … A MINIMUM of 85% of his base feels this way,” writes yet another correspondent. 

Mitchell’s conclusion: The H-1B visa “is a toxic third rail, and should probably never be defended again.”

Democrats lost, horribly, in 2024, for standing directly atop third rails: Open borders, bizarre transgender stuff, racial grievances.

Now, smart Democrats are taking advantage of the ground ceded by Trump. 

See: Amy Acton, Democratic candidate for Ohio governor. Acton fired back at an infamous December 2024 social media post by rising conservative star Vivek Ramaswamy, who is now the Republican frontrunner in the Ohio governor’s race.

In the lengthy post, Ramaswamy argues “top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans,” not because of an “innate American IQ deficit,” but because of American culture. 

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long … A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” 

Ramaswamy called for “a culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence.”

Ramaswamy’s hypothesis is similar to Trump’s: Companies are hiring foreign workers not because they’re cheaper, but because they’re more talented (or hardworking) than Americans.

Acton’s response, posted Wednesday: “Vivek Ramaswamy told us how he really feels when he said that Ohioans aren’t succeeding because they’re lazy and mediocre and watching too much TV.”

“That couldn’t be further from what I’m seeing on the ground every day. Ohioans are working harder than ever, they’re doing everything right, and they just can’t get enough breathing room. Ohio needs a governor who listens, understands, and who is ready to bring down costs on day one.” 

Which is more appealing to voters: A governor who actively insults their work ethic, implying they’ve rightly been passed over for employment, or a governor who doesn’t do that? 

Abby Phillip, a liberal CNN host, issued criticism of the H-1B visa program on a panel with businessman Kevin O’Leary.

Abby is a liberal CNN personality, and she’s basically repeating what the Democrat governor candidate in Ohio said yesterday about H-1B. The more it becomes mainstream for Democrats to criticize the great foreign replacement of American workers, and the more the GOP establishment… https://t.co/6mwpLbN27P

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) November 13, 2025

“I’m not fighting against the H-1B visa folks, I’m the daughter of immigrants, both my parents were naturalized citizens of this country … I am saying there are real concerns that people have about companies that abuse the system —” Phillip began. 

“— We’re talking about genius,” O’Leary interrupted, “Bringing 65,000 geniuses to America.”

“Kevin, you know that it is not just geniuses. Sometimes. they’re abusing the system and sort of bringing in medium- to low-wage workers …” 

When Phillip is more “America First” than President Trump, something is terribly wrong. 

There is a path forward for anti-immigration (or limited immigration) Democrats. 

Senate Judiciary Democrats protested the corporate abuse of the H-1B visa program in September, writing an open letter to Andrew Jassy, president and chief executive officer of Amazon. 

“Amazon has laid off tens of thousands of employees in recent years. At the same time you have been laying off your employees, you have been filing H-1B visa petitions for tens of thousands of foreign workers.”

Before becoming the elderly face of race and climate communism, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders railed against H-1B visas. 

Elon Musk is wrong.

The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad.

The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make. pic.twitter.com/Mwz7i9TcSM

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 2, 2025

“And these are corporations whose main argument is, ‘We just can’t find Americans to do this work, and we just need to go all over the world to bring people in.’ … They tell us that they need more H-1B visas because Americans are just not smart enough to be computer professionals, engineers, university professors … accountants … financial analysis, nurses … psychologists … lawyers … and elementary school teachers … If Americans won’t take low-skilled jobs that pay poverty level wages, and presumably, if they’re not smart enough to do high-skilled jobs, I think the question we have to ask is: What kind of jobs are going to be available for the American people?” Sanders questioned in 2007.

If Democrats can stomach such talking points, Republicans may be in for a nasty defeat come 2026 and 2028.

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC