Bulwark Takes - Private GOP Poll Reveals Trump’s Immigration Support Crumbling

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Trump’s immigration issue is unraveling and even his own private polls show trouble. Viral videos of ICE raids and protests are driving public backlash, leaving Trump’s team worried about optics�� but not about policy. Sam Stein is joined by Marc Caputo of Axios to break down the numbers, the backlash, and what it could mean for Trump’s next moves.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. All right. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwark. And if you are staring at a familiar face, you're not wrong. Don't do a double take. We are pleased to be joined by Mark Caputo, our old pal, coming back, looking fresh, sporting the U.S. stuff. Look at that. I'm loving it. Yeah. Yeah, you know. They always said that Miami was the Yukon of Coral Gables. So, you know, for what it's worth. Yes, I've heard that before. Mark, we miss you tremendously. You're now off in Axios. We haven't had you on enough, usually because the video's tank when you're on.

But hopefully this one will do better. We're here to talk about your piece in Axios today, which has been something that I've been waiting to see. But you obviously have way more sources and insight into what's going on. Trump. The piece is called Trump's Immigration Erosion worries his team. And you got your hand on some private polling data. that I think largely reflects the public polling data, but it's more important because it's private. So this is the stuff that they're actually paying attention to. It's probably the stuff

that's going to gear their decision making. I'll just read the top line. And then you tell me what the hell is going on inside the administration. According to internal JOP polling, that alarmed some Trump insiders, it was complete at the end of December, days before ICE agents fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis. So this is already prior to that, 60% of independent voters and 58% of undecided voters said Trump was too focused on deporting illegal immigrants. 33% said Trump was primarily deporting law-abiding people as opposed to criminals. Those are bad numbers. What is the move?

Yeah. So what's going on internally here? Immigration used to be Donald Trump's strong suit. There still is support for mass deporting criminal aliens. The problem is what used to be a strong suit no longer is. When you use an axiost term, when you zoom out, you look at some of the other public polling like the Associated Press had Nork due, I think 38% approve of Donald Trump on immigration and 61% disapprove. And those numbers eventually bleed into the mind of Trump's advisors,

both inside and outside of the White House. And we didn't want to oversell this as if there's like a full-blown panic in the White House or as if there's huge doubts. I should have probably drawn up the story to read the quote from one of the advisors sort of talking about Trump's mindset. but you know Trump still supports mass deportations still supports aggressive law enforcement but they said it's not like this maybe to recast us or put it more succinct succinct a lot of this is driven by just the raw politics of X's and O's the polling and the polling how it reflects what people are seeing on video and what people are seeing on video stripped away of of you know I'm not saying they did I'm not saying they didn't, whether people antagonize the police or not, whether they were, you know, being

criminal aliens or, better said, criminal protesters or not, I should say. The reality is, like, the videos of people being dragged out of cars, masked men smashing windows. It's earned the term the Gestapo from none other than Joe Rogan. Like, that makes a difference. Right. So the quote you were referencing in your own piece, which I'm going to pull up for you, is a top Trump advisor said this.

Quote, I wouldn't say he's concerned about. the policy. He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing. He doesn't like the way it looks. Looks bad. So he's expressed some discomfort with that. I totally agree with your synopsis here, which is, and I think it's almost understated how much video, viral video, has really moved the debate here. People are consuming this through news channels. I mean, they're talking about it on news channels. It's obviously topic of conversation. But really, this is just snippets of video being consumed in social media feeds, and it's endless. And it's often disturbing or bad or dystopian, whatever you want to call it.

And Trump's a visual guy. He knows this stuff. I'm sure he understands this doesn't look particularly good. And yet, they're not, I've seen no sign whatsoever that they want to recalibrate in the, let's tone it down direction. If anything, it looks like they're ramping up. Well, you have to understand what you do, the psychology of Trump World, the Trump White House, right after the shooting of Renee Good. And there was just this kind of crush of negative media attention before much was known about her. J.D. Vance, the vice president, calls a meeting,

essentially at the White House in the press briefing room, takes the podium, stands behind the lectern. And he, in sort of sports term, he sets the edge. He's like, She shouldn't have been there. She basically broke the law. The media should be ashamed of itself. And that is the Trump posture of when you talk to Republicans leading up to that, they're like, oh, shit, like, what do we do? This, like, doesn't look good.

And Vance came up there, and it's just like, no apologies. We didn't do anything wrong. She did. The media should be ashamed of itself. And that is sort of the posture of we are not going to play defense. We're going to play offense. And then we're going to surge, which they did. However, if you understand how Trump,

world sort of thinks, I almost want to use a Pirates of the Caribbean metaphor. There's the scene in in the movie where he talks about like, you know, we're going to attack to run away. You know, this surge they essentially now have to do. They're committed to the effort. They can't look weak. They can't look like they're having doubts or second thoughts. But it's safe to say, and this is a guess of my part, I probably shouldn't do that, that this is sort of the climax of it. and we're going to see this kind of come down toward the end. So they cannot afford in their minds to look defensive. Yeah, I've been wondering about that.

What could be the way, you know, the cliche, what's the off ramp, right? But like, what is the actual off ramp here? I mean, you can, in theory, you could just say, hey, we've done our, we've done our work. Like, we've arrested X number of people. And they're doing that. Yeah. And we can, and the streets, you know, yeah, some bad stuff happened. Bad stuff.

Someone was killed. But like, you know, we got criminals off the streets and we're good. now. You could, in theory, say that. Right. But it doesn't look triumphant, right? Yeah, but remember... Maybe it does. I don't know. I'm not saying whether it looks triumphant or not. I'm not sure that would be as much their frame as the new cycle changes so much. Like, you know, what about the Epstein files, right? What about Venezuela? What about Russia? What about Iran? You know what I mean? And so these things, the economy, health care. So, you know, their thing is, is that they just don't want to look like they

can't afford to look weak in this situation. And there's also just, to be very clear, like deep frustration, anger in the White House and in Trump circles, because they're saying these are sanctuary cities. The local police should be helping us enforce the federal immigration officers and force immigration laws. They're not. And then they're telling people to go out and protest, albeit peacefully, which the Trump people don't like to emphasize that Governor Walt says. But nevertheless, you have, in their view, a state government that is recalcitrant in enforcing federal law, encouraging people to protest, and then this stuff happens. And I'm like, well, you know, this stuff happens. That's their view. And that also informs their sort of frustration

and their desire to be very aggressive about it. Yeah. Now, you referenced Rogan. I thought that was really telling. I, Rogan's kind of gone there a bit on immigration before. I thought the other big tell, Megan Kelly this morning, I'm going to, we're going to play it now. We're starting to get political data in on it. And it's not great. Not great. So Trump's got an interesting question to ask himself because today he's saying, if you don't start behaving in Minneapolis and stop impeding law enforcement, I'm going to declare that it's time to use the Insurrection Act and send in federal, like, National Guards to protect these ICE agents and, you know, things are gets, shit's going to start to get even more real.

All right. So there you go. I mean, like, she's being, you know, anxious. She's openly anxious about how this is playing politically and openly anxious. I think about the possibility that it escalates because he invokes the Insurrection Act. You know, that to me is a bellwether, right? Rogan, Kelly, like people who are in the sort of magosphere or conservative universe saying we don't necessarily think things are going particularly well. Right. And that's because they're not. It's just, it's difficult to look at all these videos.

It's difficult to avoid even being exposed to the videos if you're on social media or watching the news or interested in the news. To just, you know, again, Windows smash. guys at the mass, the, the, the, the target grocery store cart rangler. Yeah. And, like, and the fact is, it's like, everyone at one point or another has been pulled over by a good cop, or at least I have an atrocious driving record. I'll admit it.

Everyone, everyone has been pulled over by a bad cop. And the attitude that we're seeing in these videos, and it's self-selecting, obviously, is guys who fall on the bad cop end of the spectrum, the badge heavy cops, the little mini authoritarian, you know, a little il ducche with the gun. Can I ask you a question about this? I don't know if you have any incited to this. But is Trump upset that a lot of these ICE officers look a little bit overweight and don't fit the bill? Don't you think that's something that would bother him?

Yeah, that's a good question. That is a Sam-Signed story. I would have been assigned as a report. Yeah, I absolutely would say. Trump just doesn't like the look of these guys. Yeah. Yeah. And again, Trump watches a video of them falling on ice.

He's like, what the fuck? Exactly. I try fiber, kids, you know. Like, I do, I haven't heard that. And as it said, like, you know, and like, for them, it's just this catch-22. Because Trump likes strong law enforcement, right? He likes aggressive tactics. But he's, he's aware enough to know.

And the polling now is pretty unanimous. that this is just not great. Like even a conservative pollster I talked to, independent of this story, which we didn't quote, had said that in his survey work, he had found that, and again, there's a Republican pollster, that when asked who do you support more,

ICE agents or the demonstrators or the protesters, ICE agents only edged out the demonstrators by like a couple percentage points. And normally when you look at polling about like cops versus protesters, cops overperform. And here you're not. not seen. Yeah, and I wonder how much it's because, yeah, Ice versus Copps is an interesting and important distinction here. But it is kind of crazy to watch the signature issue. I mean, you,

you mentioned it, but the AP NRC poll, I don't know if you're supposed to pronounce it Nork. I didn't know. I guess North Korea. I mean, like him at 38 on immigration is insane to me. Insane. And it's actually, he was, his overall popularity rating is higher than 38. He's at like 40 in the Paul. So people approve of his job more than they approve of his handling of immigration. I can't recall when that's happened. And to lose that as an issue. And the other thing that's interesting, I didn't look at the Republican, I didn't look at the cross tabs of it because I think Americans, it wasn't really a political poll, but I'm sure there was a party ID in there, is that in far right circles, they like Nick Fuentes, they think Donald Trump is not doing enough.

So he's, you know what I mean? So he's getting buffeted by those two sort of polar forces. Okay, well, we're not going to go there. Mark, I appreciate you coming back on here. I know you're busy berating Florida auto dealers on Twitter and that your schedule is quite busy. So thank you for tucking us in. Well, I probably, I don't want to get, well, maybe I don't get it. Do not get yourself in trouble, Mark.

But, yeah, I would go to my Twitter feed and you can look up, look that up. I was not to show. I was not making it up. I was not making it up. up, okay? Mark, love you, buddy. Thank you for doing this. Those who are watching, Mark, obviously worked for us for a while. He's now at Axios, where you can read his stuff, including his latest article, but you shouldn't subscribe to the issues. Subscribe here to the bulwark where you get great takes like this. Take care, buddy.