Trump admin's 'show of force' in US cities can't 'shore up a flailing president': analysis

President Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations are, according to Salon's Sophia Tesfaye, "meant to provoke a response to justify harsh crackdowns on Trump’s political foes. She noted that "his people are admitting as much," but those people are having a hard time selling this to the nation —even on Trump-friendly Fox News.

As governors Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and JB Pritzker (D-Ill.) push back against Trump's mass deportations and dispatching of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Chicago, speculation and concern grow over the possibility that the president will soon invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows a president to dispatch active-duty military to states that are defying federal law.

This move, Tesfaye argues, is "a show of force meant to shore up a flailing president" suffering from plummeting poll numbers, some even on what was once a Trump strong point — immigration — after U.S. citizens and legal residents have found themselves on the receiving end of the administration's crackdowns.

As a new CNN poll showed that 60 percent of Americans oppose the recent troop deployments, "Trump’s foot soldiers have fanned out across the country to sell an increasingly wary nation on effectively federalizing policing in American cities," Tesfaye says.

FBI Director Kash Patel, for example, posted on X that "Chicago will be saved," upon his — and troops' — arrival despite the fact that Chicago "just ended a summer with the lowest homicide rate in 60 years," writes Tesfaye.

"Criticism is escalating in the wake of a series of over-the-top ICE operations in the last week, including allegedly pepper spraying Chicago police and detaining children," she wrote, while also describing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's most recent embarrassment in the Windy City.

Noem, "who said in 2024 there would be 'war on our hands' if former President Joe Biden federalized National Guard troops, kicked off her swing in Chicago with an awkward pit stop on Friday at a municipal building for a bathroom break. But the doors were slammed shut in her face," Tesfaye writes.

"Since the entire tour is a content operation, the embarrassing moment was caught on camera," Tesfaye says.

She also observed that right-wing YouTube star Benny Johnson "is documenting the supposed collapsing civic order in cities on behalf of the White House," but his presence "may be doing more to undermine any message of power and control Noem hopes to convey."

In the wake of MAGA fury over Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, Noem's response, Tesfaye says, was "hysterical."

"Well, they suck and we’ll win, and God will bless us and we’ll stand and be proud of ourselves at the end of the day, and they won’t be able to sleep at night because they don’t know what they believe. And they’re so weak, we’ll fix it," Noem said.

Besides Patel and Noem, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller "also recently ramped up his media appearances to legitimize the administration’s controversial operations" but has suffered his own "major media mishap," according to Tesfaye.

She recalled his recent interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez in which Miller said "Trump had 'plenary authority,' meaning absolute power without limitations or restrictions on the issue, before suddenly freezing in front of the camera."

This "revealing misspeak," as Tesfaye describes it, has also backfired on Fox, where, "comically fixated on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) recent diss of Miller, to the amusement of the New York Democrat."

“I cannot believe they aired this and made him listen to it live. I am crying,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X, sharing a snippet of Miller’s Monday interview with Fox's Laura Ingraham. During that segment, Ingraham aired an Instagram video of Ocasio-Cortez tearing into Miller's height during her Sunday stream.

Fox failed to snap back at that, too, Tesfaye says.

"Their only jab back at her was that she’s wearing comfortable clothing in her own home," Tesfaye says.

"'Well, we knew that her brain didn’t work,' Miller responded. 'Now we know her eyes don’t work. So, she’s a mess, right? What a trainwreck."

The next day, his wife, Katie, was pressed about Ocasio-Cortez’s mockery of her husband by Fox News host Will Cain, and she clarified that her husband was actually 5'10".