Back in 2008, President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
It appears that President Donald Trump’s version of that might be more along the lines of "Create a crisis, stoke the crisis and then use that crisis to your advantage."
And Trump absolutely saw a crisis he thought he could use once protesters started setting driverless cars on fire in Los Angeles.
Once again Trump gets to change the conversation. We were recently talking about budget cuts and his feud with Elon Musk. Now we’re not.
He used those violent visuals of looting and chaos — as relatively limited as they were — to send in the National Guard, followed by 700 Marines. Clearly, Trump was trying to use the military to make a show of strength — whether or not Los Angeles actually needed the help. The narrative was obvious: America needed protecting, and he was there to protect it. Democrats, on the other hand, are weak and care more about immigrants than Americans. Once again Trump gets to change the conversation. We were recently talking about budget cuts and his feud with Elon Musk. Now we’re not.
The White House staff, at least initially, couldn’t believe its luck. According to Axios, the White House and its allies absolutely saw the protests as a political opportunity to push Trump's immigration policy and "big, beautiful bill. "“It’s the best BBB marketing ever. It has brought the critical nature of increased border funding and immigration enforcement to the fore,” said Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet.
Tom Homan and Trump started ad-libbing about whether California Gov. Gavin Newsom should be arrested. And House Speaker Mike Johnson was so eager to show his loyalty to Trump that he suggested Newsom “ought to be tarred and feathered.”
But while violent protesters and looting in the streets aren’t a winning campaign message for Democrats, Trump’s increasingly heated rhetoric and insistence on escalation comes with its own political risks.
Immigration was, at least up until recently, an issue on which Trump reliably polled on well. Back in January, a Quinnipiac poll of registered voters showed 47% approved of how Trump was handling immigration issues while 46% disapproved. However, looking at a newer Quinnipiac poll conducted from last Thursday to Monday, only 43% of registered voters approved of Trump’s handling of immigration issues, and his disapproval numbers on the issue had jumped up 8 points, to 54%. (Sunday's NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey gives Trump an edge on the issue, with a slim majority of 51% still approving of his handling of border security and immigration.)
Meanwhile, a YouGov poll of 4,300 adults conducted Tuesday found that 45% disapproved of Trump’s sending in the National Guard, while 38% approved. Even more people disapproved of sending in the Marines.
Trump almost always wants to push as far as he can. Testing the limits of his power is his default setting. But during his first term, Trump was often reined in by those around him. During a meeting in the Oval Office in 2019, Trump stunned aides with his ideas about how to prevent migrants from entering the United States. “After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal," reported The New York Times.
Trump’s former defense secretary Mark Esper recalled that in 2020, when Trump wanted to clear Black Lives Matter protesters from outside the White House, he asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something.”
There is little question that Trump believes the military is a powerful tool, both symbolically and practically.
This time around, Trump has surrounded himself with yes people and sycophants who both enable and approve of his decision-making. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have been quiet about his military interventionism, with the weak exceptions of Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. That leaves only the courts as a final check. He is looking to see just how much power he truly has so he knows just how much power he can use.
There is little question that Trump believes the military is a powerful tool, both symbolically and practically. He also is leaning even harder into the law-and-order posturing of his first term, with a decidedly alarming new sense of entitlement. But even potent symbols can be abused.
We are more than a year removed from the midterms, and the presidential election feels an almost impossible two years past that. Will any of this matter by then? It feels foolish to even try to guess. But in the short term, whatever political capital Trump could have earned last week may be squandered by his inability to quit while he’s ahead.
