Make visible who and what they are
Marcy Wheeler argues that the more Donald Trump authoritarians, the worse it goes for him. Meaning the more the American public will see through him, supporters included. The shutdown may have the same effect.
Trump ran last year on an immigration crackdown. It’s just that the more of Stephen Miller’s heavy hand we see in ICE video after CBP video, the less Americans like it. In event after staged event, like the violent abductions by masked agents and the horse march through MacArthur Park, Americans have grown more squeamish about getting what Trump promised. Seeing people thrown to the pavement and gang-beaten is not what they bargained for. For Trump it’s a bad look, and we know how attentive he is to appearances:
As noted, several of these efforts have largely failed. The ICE spectacle, often featuring Kristi Noem as the figurehead, often look ridiculous and have repeatedly led to blowback (such as her staged visit to CECOT or a recent Chicago raid that resulted in the detention of two American citizens, along with some others). The attempt to eroticize ICE raids often looks pathetic.
Meanwhile, while Miller attempts to create spectacle to eroticize ICE goons, bystanders continue to capture his goons rolling around on the ground violently abusing people, and in this particular case, desperately losing his gun. They capture people shaming ICE agents. A latest video shows a food delivery guy riding away after 8 heavily armed men chased him for saying something. And those — not Miller’s fancy new trucks — are what go viral on social media.
As Rachel Maddow noted about the comical bicycle chase, insert “Benny Hill” music here. The videos make Miller’s “goons look fat, incompetent, and pathetic” with their “[b]utt cracks and beer bellies.” Whiskey Pete Hegseth certainly would not approve, despite that fact that “[m]odern nations … don’t win wars by having big biceps.”
Wheeler speculates that this is why Trump and Miller have shifted their focus to blue cities allegedly awash in violent crime. Immigration has jumped the shark.
The shutown has the potential to further erode Trump’s support for the same reason. The more people see of Trump 2.0, the less they like it. The shutdown will raise the visibility of matters that Trumps has tried to distract from with tweets and stunts.
For one, Trump’s usurpation of powers assigned to Congress. Wheeler writes:
Start with Russ Vought. To my mind, too few Democrats have framed their primary message — that this is a fight to actually return to existing funding levels before the Big Ugly Bill stripped healthcare from millions of Americans and from rural hospitals — to include the power of the purse. That is, almost no one is being told that the issue, and one of two main differences in the competing continuing resolutions, pertains to protecting Congress’ power of the purse.
The SCOTUS shadow docket opinion permitting Vought to usurp that power as the case moves forward has raised the stakes of this for Democrats and, as this Politico article lays out, made it easier for them to explain the stakes.
Politico:
The battle to rein in Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought through a piece of must-pass legislation has been eclipsed by Democrats’ larger push to extend expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits that are due to expire at the end of the year.
But Democrats are seething about the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” opinion, arguing that Trump and the high court are ignoring the intent of the 1974 law designed to prevent presidents from withholding federal cash. And they see themselves as the last line of defense.
“He is unchecked at this point,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), another senior appropriator, said of Trump in an interview. “We have to check him. No one should have that kind of power.”
Trump, of course, threatens to retaliate against Democrats for not kissing his ring. His retaliation will also harm his base. The problem, Wheeler suggests, is that to use his leverage, “Trump has to claim credit,” thus making “visible all the damage he’s doing to the services government offers.”
Whatever limited wisdom there was in Democrats trying to make the shutdown about saving health care, now that people will lose it, flog the hell out of it.
Wheeler:
The longer this shutdown goes, the more obvious the initial effects of the Big Ugly bill in terms of rural hospital shutdowns and expiring subsidies for ACA premiums will become.
It makes it easy to demonstrate — as Tammy Duckworth did here — how badly Republican members of Congress are screwing over their own constituents.
Trump is already vulnerable on the economy and on the Epstein files. He’s souring farmers on his tariff policies. So work the eye. There’s more at the link.
But I want to add to the “butt cracks and beer bellies” angle. It’s clear from the behaviors of Miller’s ICE recruits that they must either have received their shoddy law enforcement training over Zoom or over the weekend. Their brutishness reveals many not only as incompetent but as sadistic testosterone junkies. So angry confrontation by protesters may simply give the ICEmen exactly what they want: a chance to bust heads under color of law.
Jimmy Kimmel won his bout with Donald Trump not only with public support for the First Amendment but with satire. A friend reminded me of how protesters in Charlotte once faced down the KKK and Nazis by coming to protest as clowns and mocking them mercilessly.
I’m not suggesting clowns, exactly. But geared-up, amped-up men who put such stock by their macho strike me as more vulneable to relentless mockery of their manhood than to their acting like Nazis. More cell phone videos set to the “Benny Hill” theme, please. Just a thought.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.
