Trump and Musk often campaigned against illegal immigration. It is easy to understand why. These types of people have no political power of their own and it is easy to rile up the masses against them with simple scare tactics. It is a blend of fear, racism, and nationalism. This is what the common man voted for.

On the other hand, Musk and Trump are both in favor of at least some kinds of legal immigration. Musk and other tech barons want cheap east asian human capital, Trump needs hospitality visa workers for his properties.

Couple of additional things to note. I believe Musk himself came to the USA on an H1b visa legally before over staying his welcome becoming an illegal immigrant.

The second note and the real reason tech barons want H1b human capital is that they are essentially well paid indentured servants who are not legally allowed to switch jobs. You dont need to promote them, give them raises or treat them well at all. Once you are done with them they are easy to get rid of. They don't know their rights and when they do they typically won't assert them. You can tell a kid on a visa or in OPT that they need to work 60 hours a week or more and if they balk, you can simply get the next one.

Of course none of this support is actually about MAGA. It is all about tech barons keeping labor on a short price controlled leash.

This should also explain to you why Trump and Musk want to automatically give residence status to international students who graduate with stem degrees. The result of which will flood the US tech sector with candidates driving down the cost of human capital.

Changes in election finance (Citizens United, failure to enforce other laws, letting PACs coordinate closely with campaigns) have made it clear there's a difference between "voters" and "constituents".

Voters put someone in office. Constituents are who the officeholder serves.

Special interests, or even single oligarchs can now finance campaigns, and become the officeholder's constituents after the voters elect someone to office.

Musk and other oligarchs are Trump's constituents, they financed his campaign, donated to his inauguration, generally provided emoluments. Voters, having put Trump in office, are no longer important. They have no current leverage. Trump now acts in his constituent's interests.

Great observation. Voters have short memories and one day of power every 2 years. In politics, money has power every day. I believe it is no coincidence that Musk has announced that he intends to fund candidates in future elections.

Because Americans no longer aspire to wealth -- if they ever did. They looked like they did, but what they really aspired to, and still do, is unaccountability, as a pathway to wealth or to whatever.

Many of them didn't actually pay attention to Trump's actual platform - Trump voter remorse has been documented in the phenomenon of people trying to look up how to change their votes after the fact. They were convinced by rhetoric and propaganda, that Biden made gas prices go up and caused inflation, that the Democrats were sending Mexicans over the border to steal their jobs, etc, and by the typical populist appeals to rage and emotion, rather than reason.

This is because Americans, by and large, don't bother to know anything more about a candidate than what the memes on the internet tell them.