'They thought this was their moment': Officials stumped by backlash to major Trump policy

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a trilateral signing event with Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev

President Donald Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller unleashed what New Republic podcaster Greg Sargent called “a long, crazed, angry, shrill rant” about demonstrators in Washington, D.C. protesting Trump’s military occupation of the city.

“All these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been,” Miller said. “And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations. And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department, the support of the National Guard, and our federal law enforcement officers. So, we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies.”

Guest speaker and New Republic writer Monica Potts joined Sargent on his “Daily Blast” podcast and agreed Miller’s rant looked like an expression of weakness, and possibly surprise.

“I do think on some level that Miller and the more overtly fascist people around Trump really thought that this was their moment,” Sargent said, adding that “Trump, Miller, and their allies were certain that there’s a latent majority out there prepared to rally behind authoritarian rule. But that’s not what’s happening. Poll after poll has shown that the public is rebelling. Maybe that’s why Miller is panicking.”

Potts said “they may be sensing the backlash starting … and it’s very early in Trump’s second term already.”

“He’s only been in office for seven or eight months — however long it’s been now, it feels like a lifetime. They may be worried about running out of steam,” she said.

Potts said she suspected the motivation for the occupation was a “holdover from the 1980s and ’90s, which Trump never left,” when cities were under-resourced and underappreciated before increased urbanization and city reinvestment. “His brain is still in the ’80s and ’90s,” she said.

Sargent raked Miller’s attempt to speak for Black people, despite a new Washington Post poll finding 80 percent of Black DC residents oppose Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police, as well as 67 percent of Hispanics.

“Sure doesn’t sound like it’s confined to white hippies, does it?” Sargent asked.

“No, not at all. … [H]aving troops on the street harassing people, smoking cigarettes on their own stoops, or arresting delivery drivers who are just trying to make a living is not what people want in these cities.” said Potts, adding that “the optics for Trump are really bad right now. And the longer it goes on and the more people try to rally behind opposition to it, the more they’re going to look for opposition leaders.”

Read and hear the New Republic podcast at this link.