“It would be nice considering how important the immigration issue has been to Trump to have gotten an economist to this position who was at least not a booster for higher immigration,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think tank.
Mr. Trump’s right-wing media supporters are also up in arms. Breitbart, the website that was formerly run by Steven K. Bannon, the president’s chief political strategist, said Mr. Hassett’s appointment showed that the “corporatist, business-first” was muscling out the “populist, America-first” that got Mr. Trump elected. Commenters on the conservative website Infowars were similarly appalled, with some lamenting, “We have been sold a false bill of goods.”
And some leaders of the white nationalist “alt-right” movement also interpreted the move as a sellout. “This is yet another betrayal, just like breaking his promise to deport all illegal immigrants and to repeal President Obama’s executive amnesties,” said Jared Taylor, the editor of the online magazine American Renaissance who spoke highly of Mr. Trump during the campaign.
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