President Donald Trump is growing increasingly scared, according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent.
Writing in his Wednesday column, Sargent said he doesn't buy the media narrative that Trump is "pivoting" or "deescalating" on the immigration raids he's been conducting for the past year.
"I'm calling bulls——," Sargent wrote on BlueSky. "The threshold is this: As long as the military occupations and the treatment of US cities as enemy territory continue, there's no pivot. ICE out."
He cited reports from PBS News, the New York Times and Axios, all of which claim that the administration is somehow pivoting.
"If media is going to claim a 'pivot,' let's stipulate some threshold questions: Is ICE still treating US cities like occupied territory? Will there be serious governmental investigations into ICE killings? Any accountability for them? If not, nothing is changing," said Sargent on BlueSky.
"Trump wants to appear eager to minimize clashes between his government militias and protesters. But he doesn't want them to stop doing the things that are causing the clashes in the first place. The 'pivot' is really about getting Dems to back off in budget talks," he said.
He cited a Punchbowl News report saying that if Democrats renegotiate funding for Homeland Security, it means the U.S. House must return to pass the new measure worked out in the Senate. Republicans don't think they'll approve of funding measures that require things like body-worn cameras and other standards.
"So the show of de-escalation is about making it easier for Senate Democrats to support appropriations bills that don’t require another vote in the House," wrote Sargent.
Meanwhile, Sargent recounted, a report fromThe Wall Street Journal, said that top Trump staff realize that federal agents have become a “political liability" to the administration and Republicans as a whole.
They're now at work trying to figure out “how to continue deportations without clashing with protesters.” They’re also desperate for ways to “improve ICE’s image" after a year of the agency clashing with Americans, snatching even documented and legal immigrants and taking citizens into custody for days.
Sargent mocked even the concept of a Trump "pivot," saying that the only way it will happen is if there's legal accountability and policy changes. He cited Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who questioned who in the White House is asking the Justice Department to "coverup these killings."
Sargent thinks someone at Homeland Security is directing the actions, and wondered who. According to a conversation overheard in an airport by an Axios reporter, that person is former Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, who is the "brains" of DHS, while Noem is nothing more than the "face."
"Trump knows all this has gotten away from him," the columnist commented on BlueSky. "He knows ethnonationalists like [Stephen] Miller [and JD] Vance, who despise pro-immigration America and thus smeared the victims, badly miscalculated. He knows the popular passions unleashed here can't be manipulated."
Sargent concluded, "He's afraid."