How Trump’s 'sadistic' plan to bully liberals is backfiring badly

On Friday, March 20, a woman identified as "Linda from Arizona" called into a right-wing radio program, "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," with a suggestion: sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports. President Donald Trump later did exactly that, and his supporters praised the move as a way to help U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers who are feeling overwhelmed as a partial shutdown of the federal government drags on.

Linda's main concern, however, wasn't helping TSA employees, but upsetting liberals and progressives. Linda told the hosts, "I think it would set their hair on fire" — to which one of them responded, "Democrats would go absolutely insane."

In an article published on March 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte notes that Trump's idea to send ICE agents to airports appeared to come from Linda — a move that, the journalist stresses, did nothing to ease the long lines at U.S. airports.

Marcotte explains, "Both Linda and the hosts were blunt that the goal was not actually helping the Transportation Security Administration run more efficient checkpoints, but to trigger the liberals…. Liberals hate ICE, the logic went, so why not inflict ICE on liberals and make them squeal? But the MAGA coalition has not been known for its logic, and it's clear from the conversation that no one involved was really thinking this through. Instead, the scheme was rooted in a childish — and sadistic — impulse to bully."

The headaches at U.S. airports are illustrated by passenger Will Frampton. During a March 24 appearance on MS NOW, Frampton told host Chris Jansing that he showed up at Atlanta's airport five hours early for a flight — but missed it because he spent nine hours waiting in a TSA security line.

According to Marcotte, the ICE-in-airports idea is hurting, not helping, Trump.

"After the idea percolated up from Linda to Clay-and-Buck and then to Fox News, Trump thought it was a stroke of genius," Marcotte writes. "Since he couldn't admit that he got the idea from a random woman in Green Valley, Arizona, he took credit for it on Monday, (March 23), comparing himself to the man who invented the paperclip in the process. What is remarkable is that everyone involved — all of them, from Linda to Trump himself — are so consumed with the desire to trigger the liberals that no one stopped to wonder if the plan to put ICE in airports would backfire, as it appears to be doing."

Marcotte continues, "Early reports show ICE is doing nothing to speed up security lines, many of which have hours-long waits due to Republicans' refusal to pass a Democratic proposal to fund the TSA directly while still withholding DHS funding. The presence of ICE is instead ratcheting up tensions at the already stress-laden airports. Federal immigration officers can't do the real work of screening passengers, but they can harass and manhandle people suspected of being immigrants. Despite credulous media reports perpetuating the belief that ICE has been deployed to help TSA agents, every indication is that Trump's goal is to make already-miserable traveling experiences even worse."