Trump, the 600,000 Students - and the War Inside His Own Movement

It was a sentence, casually spoken in the Oval Office, that triggered a tectonic shift within the Trump camp. Donald Trump announced that 600,000 Chinese students should in the future be welcome in the United States. For universities a matter of survival, for Trump a supposedly economic move - but for his most loyal followers a betrayal that could hardly be heavier.

The reactions are fierce. Marjorie Taylor Greene declared that if universities could only survive with Chinese students, “then they should just go under.” Steve Bannon even called for a complete stop for all foreign students. And Laura Loomer, perhaps the most radical voice of the movement, swung the rhetorical wrecking ball: “Nobody, I repeat nobody, wants 600,000 Chinese ‘students,’ aka Communist spies, in the United States.” For Loomer the matter is clear: Trump is opening the gate for the enemy she has long portrayed as a threat.

Her words are poison for the president. In further posts she says that China “murdered 1.2 million Americans” - an allusion to the Corona deaths - and that Trump is now importing their “replacement.” “This cannot happen,” she writes. In a second attack she calculates: if you deport 1,000 migrants a day but at the same time let 600,000 “spies” into the country, you cannot speak of mass deportations. With that she not only questions Trump’s policies but also the core of his campaign: the narrative of uncompromising toughness at the borders.

But Loomer does not stop at the students. In a furious tirade on “War Room” she rants about the “Islamification of the US State Department,” about employees who secretly issued visas for Palestinians, about organizations founded after January 6 to sabotage Trump. For her the enemy is not only outside, but already inside. And when she says that Trump must finally fire all “Communists, Islamists and Biden holdovers,” then it is more than a throwaway line. It is a frontal attack on the credibility of a government that likes to portray itself as completely loyal.

Other voices of the movement also join in. Laura Ingraham, Trump confidant and TV host on Fox, snarled that these 600,000 slots were being “taken away from American kids.” On One America News Network the question was raised whether Trump wanted to “import the influence of the CCP into the classrooms.” On talk radio across the country callers said they felt betrayed: “We elected him to close the borders, not to open them for spies.”

At the same time Steve Bannon is trying to dampen the fire. On GETTR he spoke of “Fake News” when reports of an open rift between Loomer and Trump surfaced. But the very fact that he has to appease shows how deep the rift already goes. Because while Bannon swears loyalty, Loomer drums against the decision on all channels - and even brings Greene back to her side.

Particularly explosive: Loomer has had direct access to the president for months. She boasts of having brought down unwanted officials through her research. She was called “Trump’s Rasputin” when her dossiers shook the National Security Council, the FDA and other agencies. Trump himself praised her only recently as a “patriot.” But now it turns out: exactly this patriotism rhetoric is being used as a weapon against him.

This raises the question that hangs over everything: will there be war between Trump and Laura Loomer? The ingredients are there. On one side a president who acts pragmatically, who wants to save universities, who cannot completely sever ties with Xi Jinping. On the other side an activist who serves as the mouthpiece of the most extreme Trump supporters and reaches millions. Loomer channels the anger - and her attacks hit the nerve of a movement that perceives every deviation as betrayal. That Trump now tries to calm things down by saying they will “check carefully who is there” seems like helpless damage control. But the seed of mistrust has been sown. In the digital underground, where the movement radicalizes, the headlines are already circulating: Trump is letting 600,000 spies into the country. Trump is betraying the nation. Trump is sacrificing America to China.

It is telling that this storm was not triggered by liberal opponents but from his own ranks. Laura Loomer says what many in the core of the movement are thinking - and she does it with a sharpness that Trump cannot simply ignore. Between the two a conflict is building that means not only personal enmity but could tear apart the ideological foundation of “Make America Great Again.” The decisive question is not whether Loomer is exaggerating. The question is whether Trump’s base will turn against him if he violates their dogmas. 600,000 students are not just a number - they are the test case of whether the president still controls his movement. And if Laura Loomer continues to pound so loudly, then a sentence spoken casually in the Oval Office could become the war Trump can least afford: the war against his own movement.

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