'Who he really cares about': Analyst reveals motive behind Trump's attacks on institutions
U.S. President Donald Trump holds an iPhone after it rang while he was speaking on the day he signs an executive order at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 23, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
After NPR announced it was suing President Donald Trump's administration for stripping it of federal funding, one commentator observed that the 47th president may continue to double down even as he stacks up losses in court.
During a Tuesday segment on MSNBC, author and journalist David French told host Alex Witt that Trump's attacks on vaunted institutions like Harvard University, NPR and PBS may prove fruitless, but that judgments not in his favor are unlikely to deter him due to one prevalent factor. French said Trump's "unprecedented attack on free speech" is likely being spurred on due to poking and prodding from his loyal MAGA base.
"There's millions of people who consume NPR, PBS content and love it very much. I would say, though, that MAGA's base are not the backbone of NPR's viewership, and I think that's probably an understatement," French said. "Donald trump is a politician who doesn't so much play to the big broad American public. He's a politician who's very, very good at maintaining and playing to that core base of his. And of course, they'll follow him anywhere. They have that very symbiotic relationship."
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"And so he's taking on targets that are very unpopular with his base, no matter how popular NPR might be with other people," French continued. "They're not with his base. And that's who he really cares about. And so that's what's giving him rocket fuel as he pursues this attack."
French went on to theorize that the reason Trump is attacking white-shoe law firms and Ivy League universities is because he's counting on the American public not mobilizing in the streets for "elite" institutions. And he argued that their "politically unpopular" nature makes them a ripe target for the Trump administration's executive actions, and compared it to the "red scare" of the 1950s.
"That's the classic move of the censors. If you go back to the Red Scare, this was a frontal attack on free speech aimed at some of the least popular speech in America," he said. "This is how authoritarianism begins. It begins not by taking on the popular voices. It begins by taking on the unpopular voices."
"So he's playing to his base here, which makes it politically sustainable even while it's a direct attack on the Constitution and its political popularity, at least amongst his base, is what makes this so dangerous," French added. "He has a lot of the public wind at his back when he's doing it, and then he's turning around and vilifying the judges who are standing up against him. And so he's creating a very, very dangerous dynamic here."
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Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.
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