Why Trump’s Protest Crackdown Has Failed

Jonathan Chait: “The reason Trump’s tactic fails is that, by deploying troops to fight the anarchists, he broadens the issue into a fight about Trump himself. This inevitably draws more, largely nonviolent protesters, into the streets. ‘The numbers of protesters had dwindled substantially in recent weeks,’ one reporter in Portland observed last week, ‘but reports of heavily armed, unidentified, camouflaged federal officers abducting people off the street into unmarked vehicles and meting out violence on the people of Portland have thoroughly re-energized the populace.'”

“The same thing happened further north. ‘Nightly protests since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis had dwindled in recent weeks in Seattle but were reinvigorated in the wake of federal action in the Portland protests and after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) tweeted that President Trump had sent federal law enforcement agents to the city,’ reported the Post.”

“And so the scenes that Trump craves, pitting soldiers against black-clad radicals, have transformed quickly into troops against veterans, moms, and other antagonists who cut a more sympathetic profile. The protesters report that they have joined the protests because of Trump’s response to the protests. Tessa and Leshan Terry formed the ‘Wall of Vets’ in Portland, and came to their first demonstration after seeing video of agents beating a fellow Navy veteran.”