President Trump’s decisions to federalize the California National Guard and to reinforce them with Marines in response to relatively minor outbreaks of violence have been roundly condemned by everyone from California governor Gavin Newsom to LA mayor Karen Bass. NYT opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg is beside herself, declaring, “This Is What Autocracy Looks Like.“
Since Donald Trump was elected again, I’ve feared one scenario above all others: that he’d call out the military against people protesting his mass deportations, putting America on the road to martial law. Even in my more outlandish imaginings, however, I thought that he’d need more of a pretext to put troops on the streets of an American city — against the wishes of its mayor and governor — than the relatively small protests that broke out in Los Angeles last week.
[…]
If you saw all this in any other country — soldiers sent to crush dissent, union leaders arrested, opposition politicians threatened — it would be clear that autocracy had arrived. The question, now, is whether Americans who hate tyranny can be roused to respond.
Many people have speculated that the confrontation in Los Angeles will play into Trump’s hands, allowing him to pose as a champion of law and order bringing criminal mobs to heel. Maybe they’re right; Trump is a master demagogue with a gift for creating the scenes of conflict his supporters crave.
[…]
Public opinion, however, isn’t set in stone, which is why it’s important for everyone who has a platform — politicians, veterans, cultural and religious leaders — to denounce the administration’s authoritarian overreach. Administration officials like Stephen Miller are pushing the idea that Los Angeles is “occupied territory,” as evidenced by the foreign flags some protesters are carrying. Americans who still have hope for democracy should be saying, as loudly and as often as they can, that this is an insultingly stupid lie to justify a dictatorial power grab. Maybe it will turn out that the truth is no match for right-wing propaganda, but if that’s the case, we were already lost.
The President calling out the Guard to quell violent protests is hardly unprecedented. But, despite the shared proximity, these aren’t exactly the Rodney King riots. Nor are local officials blatantly flouting federal court orders, as they were in Little Rock and Tuscaloosa.
Calling out the Marines, while perfectly legal, strikes me as performative. There’s just no obvious tactical reason to use them for this task. Theatrically, though, it will come across as “tough,” at least to his supporters.
For now, the performance seems to be paying off.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Monday that President Donald Trump’s approval rating on the issue of immigration has skyrocketed among the American electorate.
Trump’s current net approval rating is above water at +1 point, which surged by 20 points since June 2017, Enten said, citing his own aggregate data. Trump on Saturday deployed the National Guard to combat riots that erupted across Los Angeles stemming from ICE arrests of illegal immigrants.
“[Trump’s net approval rating] has gone up like a rocket,” Enten said. “Compare now versus eight years ago during Trump’s first term. Look at this, in his first term, Trump was way, way, way underwater at -21 points. But look at this, he’s up [by] over 20 points now in the aggregate, he is in positive territory at +1 point on his net approval rating. Some other polls even have it a little higher than that.”
“There is no issue on which Trump is doing so much better than he was in his first term more than the issue of immigration,” Enten continued.
A majority of Americans, 54% and 51%, approve of Trump’s mass deportations and of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents searching their communities to locate illegal immigrants, a CBS News poll released on Monday found. Enten added that a majority of Americans who are “directly connected” to the events going on in Los Angeles, California, approve of Trump’s actions to combat illegal immigration.
“It’s not just on the broad issue of immigration where Trump is doing well, it’s on the specifics. When you dive in on the issues, Trump is above 50% and his actions are above 50%, at least it comes to those most directly connected to what’s going on right now out in Los Angeles,” Enten said.
It’s true. While Trump’s job approval is slightly underwater (-2.1%) in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, he’s at +4.5 on immigration.
And Enten is right: the numbers have swung sharply in Trump’s favor quite recently:
That the polling was similarly popular in March, swung the other way in April, and swung back in May confounds me. Maybe the negative swing was a reaction to the Kilmar Abrego Garcia matter, which has faded from public consciousness?
My suspicion is that a show of force to enable ICE agents to round up illegal immigrants will continue to play well so long as the presence of said force acts as a deterrent. If they start gunning protestors down in the street, public opinion will swing quickly.
Goldberg is undoubtedly right that we would perceive the rhetoric coming from Trump and those close to him quite differently if it were coming from a Latin American or African country. But we’re so used to his bluster that most just shrug it off. Salena Zito‘s observation, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally” still holds true almost a decade later.
