The Opinions - Trump Is Vulnerable. Democrats Still Need a Strategy.

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

Given the recent protests against ICE raids, is President Trump alienating some of his supporters? In this episode, the Opinion national politics writer Michelle Cottle and the columnists David French and Jamelle Bouie convene to discuss.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Vishakha Darbha, Kristina Samulewski and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud.. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Michelle Cottle. I write about national politics for Times Opinion, and I am back with the fabulous columnists, Jamel Bowie and David French. Guys, welcome. It's going to be with y'all. Yes, pleasure to be here as always. Well, I'm not sure the topic is going to bring you much pleasure, but let's get to it because we're going to talk immigration. So one of Trump's top campaign promises was to crack down on illegal immigration, which was a big selling point for many of his voters.

But in the past week, both of you have written about how one of his strongest issues, immigration, is now shaping up to be one of his biggest liabilities. Does that seem like a fair portrayal of where you guys are with this? I think that's right. Yeah, he's squandered his goodwill in many ways on immigration. Imagine that. Jamel, why don't you start us off with what you wrote about his response to the protests against the ice rates? Sure. I think the important thing to remember here when thinking about Trump and immigration and standing with the public is you can't conflate public support for deportations, public support for stricter border controls with a draconian crackdown on immigrants. Those are two separate things. I think that sometimes those of us in this business, don't give the public enough credit for its ability to, like, treat different things differently and have some measure of sophistication.

And immigration is one of those places where the public broadly says we like the idea of deportations, of removing people from the country who are not supposed to be here. But when they say this, there's, I think, a lot of evidence to suggest that what they're thinking of is actual criminals. They believe that there's a large population of undocumented immigrants who are, you know, like gangbangers in an L.A. set movie in the 90s, low riders and tank tops and all. I wasn't about to say tank tops. I was about to use the un-PC version for that item of clothing. Do you not do that too, no. I know where you're going with that. Tank tops seems fine, thank you.

Tanks, yeah. Doesn't have the right. Anyway, tank tops. Yeah, I know. It's not as edgy. That's what they imagine, but that population doesn't really exist. And so when they see what this looks like in practice, which are a bunch of draconian crackdowns on, you know, grandmothers and soccer coaches and business owners and people who are just

regular members of their communities, they don't like that. They think it's excessive. And what you're seeing, I think, in public opinion, what I argued in my piece this week is that that delta between what the public kind of likes in the abstract and what they're seeing in practice is the source of Trump's growing weakness in immigration. I think the public kind of intuitively says to themselves, well, you know, if you have family here, if you're working, if you're hardworking, if you have a business, then like you're basically already assimilated so you should be able to have some kind of path to being a citizen. And if you're not doing those things, right, the public's like you should get out. And so when they see the president deporting the kinds of people in, again, really harsh and draconian ways that they think should be here, should be allowed to stay here, they're like, well, I don't like how this is actually playing out in practice. And so the polling showed last month maybe was this support deportations, don't like the execution.

And now that's simply becoming a general negative view of Trump on immigration, period. I totally am with you on the theory versus practice. I mean, this is always a big thing in politics. I mean, everybody talks about how great it would be to cut the deficit, lower the debt, you know, do all of these wonderful things. But then when it comes time to do it, they realize that it's hard and the devil's in the details and you can't do it without pain and fallout. And I think that anybody who is sort of surprised by, you, you can't do it without pain and fallout. And I think that anybody who is sort of surprised by, by what Trump is doing with these immigration raids, hasn't really been paying attention. But I guess at this point, that shouldn't surprise me, surprise me either. You know, I think if Trump had done border security and then a concentrated effort on deporting criminal, illegal aliens, which would not be that different from previous presidents.

I mean, Obama deported millions of people, criminal and not criminal. He would be flying very high right now on the immigration. issue. I'm not going to, you know, let's put to the side a bunch of other elements of chaos for the moment. But he would be flying high because that's, the bottom line, as Jamel said, that's what people wanted. And I'd also add that I think people have a, also have a perception that undocumented aliens tend to be all on welfare or receiving public assistance, which is not the case. Millions and millions are very hardworking folks. What people are looking for is a secure border, low levels of disorder, and readily available goods and services. So if you put all of those

things together, what you're then dealing with is a set of tradeoffs. And then the tradeoffs, when people start to feel pain, such as we saw this flip, flop, flip, flop about the hospitality industry and the agricultural industry, which is a direct result of people being worried that they're going to feel some economic pain as a result of deportations or actually feeling economic pain the result of deportations, you see Trump, even Trump, start to waver a little bit. And you see that internal battle in the administration with this flip-flop flip. And so I think Jamel's exactly right. There was a path for Trump, a very clear, and I would say not that difficult of a path

for him to take to be smelling like a rose on this issue. Instead, it's just chaotic. And that's one of the core elements that people voted, people were voting in November. a lot of people are voting for order, not chaos. And this is an element of chaos that is souring people on Trump on this issue and many, many others. So I have a question for both of you. So I take that the polls don't look good for him right now in terms of how he's handling L.A. That said, Republicans in the Senate are using these protests to argue that this is why you have to push through his big, beautiful bill. and Republicans running for office in the midterms are using this to hammer their Democratic opponents because while some people are looking at this as a overreach,

one of the reasons that Trump was put back in office is people don't like chaos at the border. They don't like these images of people scrawling graffiti on, you know, street walls and whether or not there is a lot of violence or just a little bit of disorder. It comes down to who can spin that the best. And I think what we have seen from the Trump administration and specifically the president is nobody knows how to milk fear and chaos better than this man. That's his bread and butter. So I guess I'm just, I'm sort of skeptical of Republican spin here and the administration spin here. Like I think, of course, the White House is going to say that they're in command of the situation.

Of course, Republicans are going to say, yeah, this is great for us. We might be down eight on the generic ballot and the big beautiful bill might be ruinously unpopular with both voters, but this totally is going to work for us. What I see in the polling, at least, is that the public is basically divided on the protests and very unhappy with the deployment of the National Guard, with the deployment of Marines, with the militarization of the response to protest, with the, again, the draconian ice tactics. Like on everything relating to this, it's like double-digit net disapproval for the administration and for Republicans. And so I just don't think, I'm just not convinced by this spin, right? Like, I think to keep in mind here is that in 2020, when there were larger protests with more chaos and disorder, those protests contributed to Trump losing. They did not benefit him in the general election. he lost in part because of his inability to handle the perceived chaos of the protest.

And here we are again with protests for which there may be perceived chaos. And it's clear Trump isn't handling them. And there's sort of no reason. I see no reason to think that the outcome is going to be any different for him or for Republicans this go around than the previous go around. The other thing I read I think David mentioned. something about the trade-offs and immigration reform. And I think that what the mainstream political conversation is missing about real trade-offs when it comes to border security and internal immigration control is that there's actually

no way to do this without the kind of painful impacts on regular citizens. That you cannot actually control the external borders of the United States without making internal, creating internal pressures on existing citizens, that the two things are connected. And that I think the conversation is missing the perspective that's basically like if you like the idea of a free society where there aren't immigration agents roaming around neighborhoods, you have to actually be comfortable with a little less immigration control. that if what you want is tight immigration control, and that necessitates the kind of heightened scrutiny by state forces about who you hire, about who you have in your home,

about who you have in your church. Like, you can't separate the two. I would say there's a couple of factors here in play. As a general matter, Americans, now this is going to kind of come across a little bit weird after Trump has been elected twice. But in any given moment, as a general matter, Americans don't like bullies.

They don't like the people who are seen to be as heavy-handed and as seen to be disproportionate. They also don't like chaos. They like order. And so to Jamel's point from 2020, there was an awful lot of chaos on Trump's watch that at times he responded to with an awful lot of bullying.

It hurt him on both. both fronts that he wasn't seen as somebody who could bring order. He was seen as somebody who was fomenting additional chaos. Chaos was his enemy in the 2020 election. And so I think a lot of this depends on what actually happens in the streets. And I think MAGA has a very dangerous assessment of this situation, because I think if you're going to be around MAGA people, their theory of the case is that the far left wants to burn America's cities and that any sort of sensible immigration policy is going to result in the far left wanting to burn America's cities. And so then the only person who can stand in the gap there is Donald Trump. And so the first brick that is thrown,

the first Waymo car that gets set on fire, that starts to lock in that part of the MAGA mindset that says, okay, the fires are about to start. The cities are about to burn. And the one big regret that they have, and Trump has expressed this, the big regret that they have, is not bringing in the troops under federal control sooner in 2020. And so that's why right after this initial army deployment, I wrote that Trump administration is spoiling for a fight. I think elements of the MAGA coalition are spoiling literally for a fight in the streets. They think that that fight in the streets, that exertion of dominance and control will be, A, politically beneficial to them, and B, also, again, in their worldview, the only way to really stop the far left from torching American cities. And so I think that this is, this is the problem that we face is that there are an awful lot of people who are eager, they are eager to see some sort of confrontation. And I agree with Jamel on the political effect of a confrontation, isn't necessarily going to redound to Trump's benefit.

It creates this, contributes to this sense that America is in a state of that it's out of control. But in the short term, I think it is very dangerous for America that we have people who are, we have an administration that in many ways seems to be spoiling for that fight. And I'm incredibly grateful and thankful that these millions of people

who came out for the No King's protest did so incredibly peacefully. And I think that kind of protest really drains the power from the MAGA argument and it drains the power from the MAGA case, that essentially they're the last bulwarks against our cities of flame. Right. What's happening instead is you have these peaceful protests, and then you have the administration ramping up to create more chaos. Like it's, this is not, I really don't think

this is working in their political favor. I mean, I would like to be more optimistic. What I've seen from the Trump administration is that the reality on the ground doesn't matter that much because they spin it the way they want to. So it is a PR battle after a certain point. So you can have 99.9% of peaceful protesters. And what they're going to do is, you know, it's like what they do with immigration. They find the one hideous murder committed by an undocumented immigrant. And so that, you know, that proves that undocumented immigrants are the real danger here. Maybe it's an indictment of the Democratic Party that I'm thinking that they just don't. have it in them to kind of fight that sort of PR battle. And you can, I mean, you guys are right.

You can see the Trump administration getting more and more aggressive. I mean, we're looking at on Tuesday, New York City Comptroller and the mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by federal agents in an immigration courthouse when he was trying to escort a migrant out to prevent his arrest. I'd like to see the warrant. Let's go. Take him. Take him. Take him in me. Take him. And as we saw in California, when Senator Padilla got manhandled, this was kind of aggressive and thug-ish, and they were not trying to be delicate at all. And my sense is that they know this plays well with a lot of their voters and that the rest of the country will be upset by it, maybe. but when it comes time to, say, pull the lever in the midterms, they're not going to be voting on it.

So they just kind of ramp this up. And one of the things that makes me even more nervous is they're focusing on big blue cities, right? Because they want these confrontations in L.A., in Chicago, in New York, where they can push out their urban hellscape narrative, which one of the guys running for Senate in Georgia has been saying, we better pay attention to this because it could come to our state next. So it makes me really twitchy. I understand that nervousness and worry. But I think my view is that I think the administration, I think the White House, in addition to missing some of the dynamics that David describes about the American public not liking bullies, the American public not liking chaos and the American public attributing Trump himself with chaos, I think they just have kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of what their coalition is and why they want. in November. They did not win in November because they convinced swing voters that the right thing

to do is to have all these confrontations and crackdowns. They won in November because of inflation. You ask people consistently, what was your top issue? Majorities, inflation. What they want from the administration is lowering prices. And so if you're just on a pure electoral calculus, if Trump wants to hold his coalition together and wants to have that coalition show up to preserve Republican majorities in Congress, then the first thing he has to do, first thing he should be focusing on is lowering prices. Notably, Trump has not done that.

Notably, the public expects prices to go up because of tariffs. And so he's not doing the things that he was elected to do, and he's approaching the other issue on which the public, had a favorable view in a way that is turning the public against him. And so I think the administration is actually making like a fatal and hubristic calculation about its coalition and its political standing that, yeah, you know, they might be able to cut some videos that are going to do great on X. But like, the kinds of voters who deliver them the White House aren't on X.

They aren't watching Fox. They're not watching Fox News. They barely tune in the politics. And I don't know what he's doing for that. In fact, I think he's doing a lot of stuff to antagonize them. I would say about the only people who have as much of a political problem right now as Donald Trump are Democrats. Because yes, there is a backlash against Trump, but there isn't much indication there's growing regard for the Democratic Party. And I do expect that there will be some sort of backlash to Trump in the midterms. I'm absolutely expecting that.

But we're in this really, in the Trump era, we're in this cycle that shows why Trump is vulnerable and why he's resilient at the same time. He's vulnerable because once people experience the actual Trump, he starts to alienate some people who voted for him. But then the problem is, if Trump is still the main person articulating the concerns that the people have who voted for him, then it's very hard to squelch MAGA completely and entirely. And so on the immigration issue, it's really not enough to sort of say, well, Trump is just way overboard. There are people who have real concerns if the border is too wide open. And who are they going to trust to deal with that? Right. And so I think that's one of the issues here is that, yeah, Trump is really incredibly effective at squandering his own goodwill.

Not with his core base, of course. And the Democrats are really ineffective at taking advantage of that, except under terms that are very very short term in duration. So, yeah, they can win a midterm when Trump squanders the goodwill, but can they hold people? You know, the answer so far has been absolutely not. Yeah, so the point you made that gives me a little bit of more optimism than I've been projecting here, David, is the difference between Trump in theory and in memory and in actual, in your face every day. I think that the four years he was out of office with Joe Biden in office.

people then reverted back to the more hazy, oh, he's a television figure. Sure, he's got a lot of bluster, but he's a man of action. And was it really that bad? I mean, at least he was getting stuff done. And so they were like willing to give Trump another shot. But then the second he gets back into your living room

every single day doing all this nonsense and breaking all those eggs they like to talk. about you can't make an omelet without breaking those eggs. Then people are like, oh, this is a lot. Yeah, you know, and it's funny. You can see this actually in the 2024 campaign. Trump in theory were the big broadcast ads that he did, talking about low inflation, secure borders. But then the rally Trump was Trump in practice. It was Trump in all of his weird, weirdness. And the people he's losing right now are not the rally trumpists. They're the TV ad trumpists who are thinking, I wanted less inflation. I wanted less chaos. That's what I wanted. And now we have,

you know, I'm worried about inflation because of tariffs. I'm worried about chaos because of what I'm seeing in Los Angeles. And by the way, we haven't even touched on this sort of sense that I thought Trump was going to come in and things were going to be more peaceful in the world. Yeah. That the world was going to be more calm. David? It's not more calm. Right. Exactly. And so a lot of what people thought they were voting for, they're not. getting right now. So one of the things that I think is also happening with the focusing on the blue cities is I think he's trying to divide the nation even more. Like there's just been no side. Like I've talked to a few Republican apologists are like, oh, well, he's so different this time

around. That's why I don't have a problem with him, which just strikes me as utter horseshit. I'm sorry, but, you know. E rating. We just got an E rating. Right. They just, You think you can beep me out later. But especially on the immigration issue, we see him going as hard as he can to divide the nation into kind of blue urban centers and red rural America. I want them to focus on the cities because the cities are where you really have what's called sanctuary cities. And that's where the people are. I look at New York. I look at Chicago.

I mean, you've got a really bad governor in Chicago and a bad mayor. We can talk about politically what this will mean down the road. But I think even between now and the midterms next year, there's so much damage he's trying to do in dividing people as a way to, you know, exert power and find a justification for that. It's so mind-boggling. No, this is an extremely dangerous game he's playing,

and I don't think that Republican apologists for him appreciate the kind of real damage. it does to basically sort of like the civic bonds of the nation to utilize the power of the federal government to punish democratic controlled states not because they've done anything wrong, not because they're violating the Constitution, none of that, simply because they don't agree with your partisan agenda, simply because they're exercising the sovereignty they have as states. You do that enough. And people start to ask themselves, well, what's the point in being part of a union? If this is how we're going to be treated. What do I have in common with my fellow American in a red state if this is how their leader is going to treat me? And I'm always wary of making these sorts of comparisons and analogies. But, I mean, this is the kind of stuff that makes civil conflict. Like, this is how you get that ball rolling by convincing a part of the population of the country that there's nothing they can do.

to receive equal regard or equal status, and that by virtue of their political allegiance, or by their ethnicity, or by their sexual orientation, by virtue of whatever that's been devalued by the regime and power, they can expect to receive scrutiny and disregard from the state.

Yeah. Look, if your goal is, I want to go to communities where they're the most undocumented immigrant, and wanting to remove people from the places where they're the most undocumented immigrants, you're not singling out like four or five blue cities for that. They're a giant red cities.

Not the cities are blue, but in red states, giant red state cities that have an awful lot of undocumented immigrants in them. And yet, no, we're going after Chicago. Why? Because he is trying to stoke conflict. And here's the thing that's particularly disturbing that I have experienced that I think a lot of people, people have experienced, is that, you know, amongst Republicans, Donald Trump is either the most

trusted voice or among the most trusted voices. In other words, when Donald Trump speaks, Republicans tend to believe him. And when Trump uses rhetoric, like people hate America, they're trying to destroy America. Members of his coalition believe those words. And some of the rhetoric you hear, especially in the darkest corners of the religious right, is beyond imagination. There's a word that people use to describe Democrats. They call them demoncrats. If you're in that bubble, if you're in that cocoon, well, yeah, you want to see the Marines.

Yeah, you want to see the Army because you're taking on people under the influence of demons. I mean, that's the level of rhetoric we're dealing with here, and that's why this country is a tenderbox, and Trump just keeps pouring gasoline on it intentionally. So before I let you guys go, I'm going to bring it back to politics and opportunities.

So what opportunity with all of this churn and protests and backlash do Democrats have on this issue? I mean, we're talking about even immigrant voters poll show now trust Republicans more than they do the Democrats. So this is an opening for them. Where do they go? I mean, my thought is that this is a real opportunity to actually be a great. and try to define the term to the debate. Like, you have the president underwater on every single issue of note, including his two previously stronger ones, immigration and the cost of living.

So now was, like, the opportunity to just, like, aggressively try to cease the terrain for yourself, to try to define, redefine the party as the party that can handle these problems, that can handle, right, the actual issues facing most Americans. But part of that is going to require, from Democrats, a willingness to get in the fight, which I still don't necessarily see. There seems to be this hesitancy, especially among congressional Democrats, about trying to make a splash, make noise. Some of this is beginning with the Padilla detention last week and with Bradlander.

You're beginning to see Democrats realize that, like, if they make a scene, that's a lot of press, that captures attention that allows them to seize the stage for a bit, and that can be beneficial. But that's the kind of energy that they need, right? Like, they're not going to be able to choose the battles they want to fight necessarily. By virtue of having state power, the administration, kind of has the ability to choose the terrain. But that doesn't mean they're not, they're unable to shape the contours of that fight, especially when the administration makes so many mistakes all the time. And so I would see this as just like a big opportunity to begin to erase some of the perception of the Democratic Party as passive and responsive to events and create the impression

that it is aggressive and willing to seek conflict. Because one thing about its low approval ratings, a lot of that's with actual Democratic voters, right? Like people who are going to vote for the Democrat, but, like, don't, they're like, you know, don't associate me with these people, right? Like, recovering with just like Democrats would be an important political game. this point? I think the Democrats' opportunity is also their risk. Because here's where I'd put it, Trump's mistakes give an opposing party and Trump's overreach and Trump's the way he's chewing

through his goodwill at a remarkable rate, you can be just anybody on the other side. And you're going to be the alternative to that. And you could have some electoral success. However, there are still underlying policy issues and sort of underlying economic and geostrategic issues that people care about. And so the question then is, do you have the answers there too? And here's another issue, and this is something that we need to, I think Democrats have not fully absorbed. Better than Trump does not equal good. Okay. And so, for example, when you had all of the lying and all of the corruption around Trump, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. And then when you would point out the lying around Joe Biden and the lying around Joe Biden's condition, and then

to have partisans jump at you and say, well, it's not as bad as Trump, that's not a good answer, right? Don't answer bad with less bad. Answer bad with something that's affirmatively good. And I think that that is one of the problems we have and why we're, we've been stuck at about a 20, 25 year cycle of these parties just trading off because nobody is really, unlike in previous iterations, nobody is really solved for the problems, the actual policy problems that people care about. And so, yeah, Trump is going to give Democrats a lot of short-term opportunity. if they just sees it as a short-term opportunity without providing long-term policy solutions, then their opportunity is also a risk of their next loss. See, this is what keeps me up at night a little bit.

I've said this before. Last time around, the Democrats on immigration were like just happy to say we're not Trump, but they didn't figure out what they believed or what they wanted to do. And so when the Biden team got in there, they completely blew it, totally blew it for the bulk of the administration.

and that came back to bite them and that played a role in Trump's return. So now is the time. Now is the time for Democrats to be figuring out what they believe and what they stand for, aside from just that, well, we're not draconian and cruel. Well, I mean, this does get the kind of like structural issues in the American governance, right? Like, not just what the parties are doing, but what, like, the actual system of government allows. And so part of, I mean, I agree with David, right, that, like, you, if you, if you, you win power, you actually have to do things. You have to respond to people's problems. But that may

require what are considered to be perhaps radical approaches to like the structures of American government that make that possible. Maybe you get rid of the filibuster, right? You end it outright to make majoritarian policymaking possible again so you can do stuff. Like my view is that Trump is in part an epiphenomena of the fact that for 10 years Congress was gridlocked and deadlocked and couldn't do anything because of abuse of the filibuster. And so the one thing I throw out there is that part of this challenge isn't simply an absence of will from the respective parties, but they are conforming to a set of like structural aspects of the American system.

And maybe it's worth thinking about changing those structural aspects to make government more responsive to people's concerns, to create more direct translation between what people vote for and what they get. Well, that's when Trump's blowing everything up, right? People, I can't tell the number of people I've talked to who are like, yeah, he goes a little far, but at least he's getting stuff done. But critically, even Trump is subject to it, right? Like, he's not really getting stuff done.

That's a very good point. As seen by the fact that, like, the courts are kind of tearing its agenda apart. Well, he's not getting everything done, but he's breaking a lot of crap. He's breaking a lot of crap, but he's not really affirmatively doing things for people. and that gets to sort of the issue, right? Like the American system designed around legislative action. And we have a broken legislature. And so it's sort of like you've got to fix that.

And that's like a structural problem. And there's our next sit down, guys. That could be an entire summer series. So start prepping now. Okay? But thank you for joining me. Thank you for having us. Thanks so much, Michelle.

If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzick. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair,

Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.