Former Trump White House aide turned MAGA podcaster Steve Bannon on Thursday demanded that Vice President JD Vance take action against his big tech “Oligarch sponsors” on the issue of H-1B visas.
Bannon’s challenge came after Vance spoke about the visas at a press conference announcing a crackdown on Microsoft over alleged violations of the program.
Bannon shared Vance’s remarks and added his own message.
“Now that you are forced to act, ‘Happy Talk’ will no longer suffice—what is needed is definitive action against your Oligarch sponsors—Musk, Palantir, Thiel,” Bannon wrote.
The former White House strategist has long been critical of the visas, which allow companies to hire highly skilled foreign workers over Americans, often at a lower cost. Bannon has also publicly sparred with Elon Musk over the issue in the past.
Vance is closely linked to Palantir co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel, who mentored Vance and got him involved in one of his venture capital businesses. Thiel, who was born in Germany, later funded Vance’s Ohio Senate run with a record-breaking $15 million.
In the clip Bannon shared, Vance laid out the administration’s case against Microsoft.
“The H-1B visa is how people come into the country. The PERM program is how they stay in the United States to begin with. Now, there has been no company in the U.S., unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” Vance said.
The vice president then offered statistics to back up the claim.
“In the last year, Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers. At the same time, the company benefited from 6,300 H-1B visas and almost 3,000 green cards,” Vance said. “In other words, if you do the math, for every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with one and a half foreign indentured servants.”
Vance called it “a scandalous system that we’ve allowed in this country for far too long,” and said the administration intends to put an end to it.
“Thanks to the work of this task force, and thanks to the empowerment of the President of the United States, we’re gonna stop it,” he said.
Vance announced that, due to an ongoing investigation, the administration has decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft. That means the company will no longer be able to take its H-1B workers and apply for permanent resident status for them in the United States.
The vice president also delivered a broader warning to the business community.
“Our message to Microsoft, and to any other foreign or domestic corporation, is quite simple. We obviously want you to thrive in the United States of America,” Vance said.
He stressed that the administration wants investment in the U.S., particularly in the American technology sector, and described the White House as “the biggest boosters of your industry.”
“We want you to continue to grow and to employ a lot of people, but we want you to employ American workers,” Vance said.
“And so our message to Microsoft is: you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants,” he added.
For Bannon, however, the Microsoft crackdown is only a first step, as he called on Vance to go after the tech figures closest to him.
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