Americans Don't Actually Like Trump's Bad Guy Posturing on Immigration and the Military

President Donald Trump loves playing to a crowd. And his new branding as a wartime president is designed to do just that.

The new Trump Doctrine is maximum force with maximum publicity against the easiest targets possible. After blowing up an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean—Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a point of emphasizing that they chose to execute rather than arrest the crew—the administration renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Trump himself threatened that Chicago would "find out why" the name was changed in a social media post promising "deportations" and casting himself as a villain from Apocalypse Now.

As Reason's Christian Britschghi points out, "Trump and his communications staff keep depicting the president as the bad guy doing bad things" because they like "the theater of armed, uniformed men marching around looking intimidating. They want the public to see the federal government as threatening and capable of exercising force at a moment's notice." Watch out: Here comes President Badass.

The problem is that the public just isn't buying it. When it comes to sending the National Guard onto city streets, the administration's signature tough-on-crime policy, a majority of Americans don't support it and don't want those troops in their hometowns. And the mass deportation policy, which some of those National Guard deployments are supporting, also polls badly. Most Americans say the deportations have gone too far, and a growing majority says immigration makes America stronger, a pretty clear statement on the direction public opinion is moving.

Like many politicians before him, Trump seems to have radically overestimated his own mandate. People vote for strongmen because they want someone to end the chaos. They don't want their strongman to cause more chaos by picking fights. The immigration debate shows that dynamic clearly. Americans overwhelmingly want to deport violent criminals, which is what Trump campaigned on. They don't want to round up immigrants who have lived in America for years without any problems, which is what Trump is doing.

The June 2025 unrest in Los Angeles was a case in point. Federal agents were on the prowl for the least objectionable immigrants, rounding up workers from Home Depot and families who had shown up to their immigration court dates. Several of the people they snatched turned out to be American citizens. Those actions provoked protests and riots in the city, which became an occasion to (literally) send in the Marines. "The administration could barely contain its enthusiasm" about the chance to confront rioters, Reason's Matt Welch wrote at the time.

But, as Welch pointed out, the crackdown did not exactly reflect well on the administration. People could see that the administration had started the problem to begin with. It had gone after harmless targets and turned a city into a warzone in the process. When you're out of power, chaos in the streets is an opportunity to talk about how you'll do better than the other guy. When you're in power, chaos in the streets is a reflection of how badly you're doing now.

The proof is in the pudding. Apart from the individual issue polls, Trump's approval rating has been steadily falling since he took office. But these political setbacks are just as likely to cause the administration to double down than to back off. Even though the heavy-handed security measures poll badly, it's still more favorable terrain for Trump than other issues Americans could be talking about, such as the economy or his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Perhaps more importantly, the President Badass routine plays to the base. Despite their general unpopularity, mass deportations and National Guard deployments poll really well with Republicans. And they play best with the hyper-partisan, extremely online circles that the administration is staffed by and constantly appealing to. Vice President J.D. Vance calls himself "plugged into a lot of weird right-wing subcultures." 

The administration's trollish social media presence is a clear sign of who it's trying to play to. And online audience capture is never a good thing. Democrats learned the hard way that the positions they thought were popular—thanks to young, social media addicted staffers—were actually weird and divisive. On the other side of the spectrum, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' hyper-online presidential campaign strategy was widely considered to be a disaster.

The President Badass routine, in fact, was one of the problems that sank the DeSantis campaign. In July 2023, a campaign staffer made a meme video that featured a photo of DeSantis in uniform, videos of military-style raids, and soldiers marching under the Black Sun, a Nazi symbol. Though the campaign fired the staffer, the damage was already done. What people in DeSantis' circles thought was a cheeky way to show off their boss' strength was actually off-putting and threatening to the rest of society.

Trump's supporters may high-five themselves for causing the "biggest liberal freakout in months" with his threats against Chicago. And the progressive press will be overplaying its hand if it treats Trump's post as a literal threat to bomb Chicago. But figuratively threatening to set the city on fire isn't popular, either. Trump, apparently realizing that he went too far, insisted to reporters that his threat was really a promise "to clean up our cities." That isn't convincing. People know the difference between restoring order and picking fights.

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