Analysis: How to decode the shifting politics of the anti-Trump protests
Protests against Donald Trump's mass deportations, now spreading nationwide, could define his presidency, make or break Democratic careers and shape future elections.
The White House, which thinks it has all the cards, keeps escalating the drama in Los Angeles. Trump's aggression underlines two themes of his second presidency – the desires to look strong and to grab even more power.
Democrats, still looking to explain their 2024 election defeat and to cope with Trump's round-the-clock shock politics, again risk looking weak and overmatched. But in California Gov. Gavin Newsom, at least, they finally have a champion willing to stand up to Trump – even if he's mostly looking to 2028.
As the most significant protest outburst of Trump's second term develops, top leaders in both parties face risky calculations and swift adjustments.
Democrats have a political base itching for a fight back against the president, but must worry that radical reactions from the party's left wing will alienate the voters who walked out on them in 2024.
The White House might be convinced that the confrontations are a political gift that put Democrats in a political vise for now. But Trump is stoking tensions that could be hard to control. And by putting troops into volatile situations in the proximity of protesters and agitators, he risks clashes that could turn tragic and could validate claims that he's risking lives for a callous personal payoff.
The White House's line on the crisis is blunt and ruthless.
'(Democrats') opposition to President Trump has forced them to side with illegal alien criminals in their communities and violent rioters and looters over law enforcement officers who are just doing their jobs,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
A key goal here is to dehumanize the humans caught up in the deportation effort. The experience of an undocumented migrant often involves broken families and desperate people fleeing persecution or poverty. Even the hardest-hearted voter might feel sympathy. So, Leavitt implied that all those being targeted by ICE officers are 'illegal alien murderers, rapists and pedophiles.'
Republicans are also reviving a previously successful narrative that helped Trump win power twice – that Democrats hate the police. 'That's how radical Democrats have become. Their opposition to President Trump has forced them to side with illegal alien criminals in their communities and violent rioters and looters over law enforcement officers who are just doing their jobs,' Leavitt said.
Next, an assault on the patriotism of Democrats, suggesting that they are disloyal and side with enemies. Leavitt said, 'These attacks were aimed not just at law enforcement, but at American culture and society itself. Rioters burned American flags, chanted 'death to ICE' and spray-painted anti-American slogans on buildings.'
This dystopian picture isn't just for political effect; it's designed to drown out a ballooning constitutional crisis over whether Trump has the authority to use active-duty troops on US soil. And this is the classic argument used by authoritarians everywhere – the fabric of society is so broken that only a strongman can fix it.
'President Trump will never allow mob rule to prevail in America. The most basic duty of government is to preserve law and order, and this administration embraces that sacred responsibility,' Leavitt said. She added, 'That's why President Trump deployed the National Guard and mobilized Marines to end the chaos and restore law and order. The mob violence is being stomped out. The criminals responsible will be swiftly brought to justice, and the Trump administration's operations to arrest illegal aliens are continuing unabated.'
Some of the administration's rhetoric seems also designed to inject momentum into the deportation drive, the volume of which has disappointed some officials, and to normalize the use of the military in the effort. If Trump doesn't use maximum aggression, the narrative goes, deportations will stop, Americans will be unsafe and a foreign 'invasion' will succeed.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton made this point in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece 'Send in the Troops, for Real' that he used to call for 'an overwhelming show of force to end the riots.' He wrote: 'The threat from the radical left is clear: Don't enforce immigration laws. If you do, left-wing street militias will burn down cities, and Democratic politicians will back the rioters. The president is absolutely right to reject this threat, enforce immigration laws, and restore civil order.'
Trump never undersells his tough guy act. He's ready to go beyond the deployments of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines he's sent to Los Angeles, who are not yet on the front lines of protests.
'I can be stronger on an attack on Los Angeles,' Trump told the New York Post's 'Pod Force One' podcast, explaining the greater leeway he feels in his second term. And Attorney General Pam Bondi said on the driveway of the White House Wednesday: 'We are not scared to go further … if we need to.'
So, will the belligerence work for Trump politically?
If he can convince the public that the situation is truly dire, he might gain support for his breaching of a taboo on the use of US troops on domestic soil.
There's no doubt that Trump's voters respond to his bullishness. At his campaign rallies, his most violent rhetoric often got the biggest cheers. Hardline tactics against migrants and demonstrators also go down well with his base.
White House officials also believe that Trump's tough border policy and plan for deportations won over a broader cohort of voters. 'America voted for mass deportations,' top Trump aide Stephen Miller posted Wednesday on X.
Immigration issues have often worked in Trump's favor before. But the risk here is that he's inciting a crisis that could spread, get out of control and cost lives. He might pine to run an autocracy, but it's not clear that most Americans want to live in such conditions. And if protesters or police officers and soldiers were hurt in violence he exacerbated, it's on him. Trump lost after his first term because he made a crisis – the pandemic – worse. History could repeat itself. And once presidents lose the public's confidence, they tend to find it impossible to regain.
The breaking point could come if the expulsions widen. Recent polls have shown that while Americans do back deportations and a tougher border policy, they don't necessarily agree when friends, neighbors and otherwise law-abiding members of the community get swept up.
In Trump's first term, the zero-tolerance policy of separating migrant kids from their parents caused a public furor encapsulated by the phrase 'kids in cages.' Most political observers believe the country has moved right on immigration because of the Biden administration's hapless performance at the southern border. But a piece of poignant imagery that encapsulates cruelty or incompetence could yet shatter Trump's credibility.
Democrats face an extraordinarily complex political situation without a leader recognized by most of the country. Combating Trump's demagoguery and spinning of alternative realities would be nearly impossible if the party were firing on all cylinders – never mind when it's wandering in the wilderness.
Newsom's address to Californians on Tuesday night seemed partly calculated to inject some direction and steel to the party and supporters who've watched Trump assault the Constitution, the rule of law and bastions of the liberal establishment for four turbulent months.
Everything that Newsom says and does will be refracted through the widespread belief that he plans to run for president. For him and other Democratic governors also contemplating a run, this crisis offers opportunity and peril. Great politicians seize their moments. And a strong pushback to Trump could win goodwill among base voters. Certainly, Newsom can raise his profile by going head-to-the-head with the president every day.
Still, few Democrats come out on top of a confrontation with Trump. Perhaps only former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with her performative contempt, really got the better of Trump. And the president will use the power of his office to hurt his rivals. Before the Los Angeles protests, he was already trying to cut federal aid to California – seeking to punish its people effectively for the way they voted.
Several sitting Democratic governors – Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Wes Moore of Maryland – might also be planning runs in 2028, and could end up facing similar challenges to Newsom. Perhaps one of them will solve the dilemma of how to avoid angering base voters sympathetic to migrants while building support among centrists, independents and moderate Republicans who still want tougher border policies. If they do, they will achieve something almost no center-left politician in the Western world has yet managed.
Democratic leaders will also be desperate to make sure the current crisis doesn't unleash reactions inside the party that make it unpalatable to voters more generally.
The Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 provide a warning. While many Americans supported the nationwide marches that erupted after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, calls to 'defund the police' from isolated parts of the progressive base morphed into a political disaster that haunted the party in subsequent elections.
And while Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles risks challenging constitutional limits, another perennial Democratic warning – that he'll destroy democracy – fell on deaf ears in 2024.
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