Donald Trump just contradicted his own website on Mark Zuckerberg and work visas
At tonight’s GOP debate, Donald Trump seemed puzzled by the moderator’s suggestion that he had criticized Mark Zuckerberg.
Hadn’t he once called Senator Marco Rubio “Zuckerberg’s personal senator,” moderator Becky Quick asked him. No, Trump replied. “You guys write this stuff.”
Maybe Trump should read his own website.
“Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs,” his page on immigration reform reads. H-1B is a work visa program that lets highly skilled foreigners work in the U.S. It’s supported by tech companies like Zuckerberg’s Facebook, but opposed by those who say it takes jobs from Americans—that’s the argument Trump made on his website.
Later in the debate, Quick pointed out Trump’s mistake. “I read it on the Donald J. Trump website,” she told him, asking for his actual position.
“I’m in favor of people coming into this country legally. You can call it anything you want,” he said. But he didn’t address his blatant contradiction on Zuckerberg earlier.
At the debate, Trump seemed to endorse Zuckerberg’s position of increasing the cap on these highly-coveted visas. “He’s complaining about the fact that we’re losing some of the most talented people,” Trump said of Zuckerberg. Immigrants, he said, “go to Harvard, they go to Princeton, they go to Yale, and they go back to their countries.”
But his website seems to suggest that he opposes raising the annual cap on H-1B’s, making the argument that the visa program hurts minorities and women workers by increasing competition for jobs.
The argument he made tonight, at least, is surprisingly pro-immigrant for Trump, and on an issue that is a big deal for young immigrants and big tech companies alike. (The crowd at Columbia University’s School of Public and International Affairs, where I’m watching the debate, erupted in cheers at the statement.)
We’ll see how long that phrase stays up on Trump’s site.
Casey Tolan is a National News Reporter for Fusion based in New York City.