Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Jennifer Rubin: It’s my pleasure. Great to be here, Greg.
Rubin: Exactly. And there are two levels in which I think the media is doing a great disservice to the public and possibly dangerously encouraging a president who, as we now know, will deploy military troops—not just National Guard but the Marines—to the streets of American cities. First, the degree to which you see this mostly on cable TV and local TV, that they run and rerun the very isolated instances of violence. How many times have we seen those Waymo cars burning? So the impression they give is the one that Trump wants to convey, that it’s everywhere. The city is out of control. There are riots on and on. And the reality is so different. We’re talking about dozens of arrests, not thousands, not hundreds. We’re talking about a curfew last night in Los Angeles that was a few city blocks; that was all. The second, as you outline, is this assumption that Trump must be winning. It must be a good thing to show what a tough guy you are.
Sargent: There was a poll from YouGov, which yesterday found that only a small minority of respondents supported sending in either the National Guard or sending in the Marines—and a plurality opposed both of those. Now there was a large amount of undecideds in this poll, but clearly people aren’t won over up front by Trump sending in the military. And again, to your point, what’s critical here is the assumption by the press that it has to be a winner for Trump. It’s almost as if they think—the pundits think—that people’s brains will simply turn themselves off if they see people in military gear and they see a few burning cars. And I don’t think people will turn their brains off. I’m sorry, I just don’t buy it.
And I do have to say, Governor Newsom, who’s not been all that popular in Democratic circles, certainly has risen to the moment. He gave an excellent stream speech in which he said, First of all, don’t tell me about law and order. You were the guys who let go hundreds of January 6 violent felons and others. Now we have evidence that not only he but Stephen Miller accelerated all this. They weren’t getting their quota numbers, so he told people to go into Home Depots and to make these incendiary raids with the express purpose of raising their numbers and, of course, sparking a response. So I think we need to readjust our sights to reality and recognize that, Oh, by the way, everything that Trump’s doing is not necessarily popular. People don’t even like the parade. They don’t even favor the military parade.
Jasmine Wright (audio voiceover): The president warned that any protests on Saturday would be met with force. Can you clarify what kind of protest President Trump does support or find acceptable?
Wright (audio voiceover): So if there were peaceful protests on Saturday for the military parade, President Trump would allow that?
Sargent: So Jen, this isn’t a stupid question at all because Trump didn’t actually distinguish between peaceful and violent protesters. He said anyone who comes to protest will face “heavy force.” Is the White House really going to pretend it’s not legit to demand clarification? Now, Jen, I know pundits like to say when you’re explaining you’re losing. They all say that always, right? Well, there, Karoline Levitt is explaining and explaining badly. I think they’re on the defensive. What do you think?
And by the way, we seem to remember in the Biden years that the press continually talk about Biden’s inability to bring the country together. Remember, he was responsible for all the disunity. He was at fault because he wasn’t a leader of the entire country. Where is the discussion of that? Where is the criticism that [Trump] is the most divisive president in history? This question never is asked of him because they simply assume this is fine, this is how he operates, this is an appropriate approach for one party to undertake. And it’s really madness. Biden was criticized for not getting Republicans to stop complaining about things that weren’t happening. And Trump doesn’t get questioned about sending military troops for no good reason onto the streets of American cities. What kind of coverage is this?
David Sanger (audio voiceover): Why is he not out saying all peaceful protesters will be protected?
Sanger (audio voiceover): No, no, I’m not saying that at all. I’m just trying to figure out—
Sargent: So that’s an essential point that reporter raised. Why isn’t Trump out there saying that peaceful protesters will be protected? And by the way, it’s complete bullshit that the military was needed to get control of things in Los Angeles as Leavitt suggested there, but what’s interesting is the White House absolutely needs people to believe the military was necessary. And I don’t think voters are going to buy that. Am I being too optimistic on that point?
He is willing to send troops—not just National Guard but the Marines—when people are protesting. This is the stuff of dictators. And we have been criticized, we’ve been called hysterical, we’ve been said we’ve been exaggerating calling him an authoritarian, calling him a dictator. This is language that would probably make Viktor Orbán blush. He would probably want to be a little bit more genteel in describing what the situation actually was on the streets of Budapest or wherever the trouble was arising. So I think for the average person, what they need to see is why has it never been the case that any other president never felt things were so out of control as to require the Marines to come in to put down some lawlessness in a major city. And by the way, Democrats are so afraid of being saying you’re on the side of lawlessness that they won’t talk about that. Of course they’re on the side of law enforcement. They’re supporting the LAPD, who has been arresting people and keeping the peace. That is not, by the way, what the National Guard and the Marines are doing.
Rubin: Exactly, and we’ve had on the ground reports. I was talking the other day to Juan Proaño, who’s the head of LULAC, and he said when you go in the streets of L.A., it is so clear the police are doing what they usually do. They’re patrolling, they’re making sure people are calm, they’re settling things down. If someone gets out of hand, they arrest them. It’s the National Guard that’s tossing these flash bangs that are resorting to extreme measures at really no provocation. And that’s because this is not their forte. This is not what they’re supposed to be doing. And it’s really not what the Marines are supposed to be doing.
Sargent: Yeah, I sure hope so. And that’s exactly why Trump is making the threats he is. He doesn’t want people to show up. And let’s just be real: Trump, of course, supports using violence against protesters—peaceful ones. It’s just pure nonsense that he believes in the First Amendment or anything like that. It’s amazing that Karoline Leavitt didn’t burst out laughing when saying that. I want to switch to this Quinnipiac poll that just dropped today. It’s really something. Trump’s approval among voters nationally is an abysmal 38 percent, while 54 percent disapprove. And note this, on immigration, Trump is floundering. Fifty-four percent disapprove of his handling of immigration issues while only 43 percent approve, and 56 percent disapprove of his handling of deportations while only 40 percent approve. There’s no way to say that he’s winning on this issue with numbers like that.
I think in some ways he’s trying to have it all ways. On one hand, he said L.A. was a war zone. How did it get to be a war zone under you, Mr. President? On the other hand, he said he has saved L.A. Well, then why is he sending more troops in? None of it makes sense. And none of it comports with the most fundamental, as you say, turn your brains on. And it isn’t that hard to figure out that he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Rubin: It’s very funny that when you take a MAGA person out of his bubble and you put him on a real news show or you put him in a debate with a real candidate, the brain gets fried because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about and what their arguments are. First of all, they don’t have actual arguments; they just have catchphrases. It doesn’t really work. And you’re right. The danger of living in a bubble is you fail to persuade anyone who hasn’t been following along in the cult playbook and knows what all these wacky references are and what the assumptions are you’re supposed to know and what the facts are that you’re not supposed to pay attention to. And I think the press—the corporate press, billionaire press, whatever you want to call it—is still fundamentally unwilling to enter into conflict at a very basic level with MAGA politicians.
Sargent: Yeah. And we have a TV host now as defense secretary as well. Just to close this out, I want to return to your big point from early in this discussion—which is that in some basic sense, when the media and pundits go out there and they say Trump is winning the political battle over this stuff, it actually encourages it, right? And there’s another piece to this as well, which is I think when the media says things like, Oh, this is a political winner for Trump, it’s good political strategy for Trump, it wraps this authoritarian and fascist madness in the aura of conventional politics. It makes it sound a little less threatening. It sounds almost as if, Oh well, Trump is just putting on a show. It’s not really about anything larger. There aren’t any deeper, darker intentions here. I think that’s a real problem. What do you think? How do we get out of this?
You have to show people, you have to inject some reality. And I think you also have to make the point and Trump won’t like to hear this, He does this because he panicked. He thought he was losing control. So he did some things that no president in the similar situation would have done. Someone analogized it to calling the police when your kid gets teased at school. This overreaction, well, maybe he just isn’t tough enough, maybe he’s not calm enough, maybe he’s not stable enough to be commander in chief. And I would like to see Democrats advance that argument. You know who the grownup in the room is right now? It’s Gavin Newsom. That’s who’s acting like a person who cares about public safety.
Rubin: You too, Greg. Nice seeing you.
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