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Morris: Yeah, and this is the pattern. This is the same pattern. Last time, it was less about deportations, much more about securing the border, they called it. And that involved another notable case when the administration steps beyond the policy that public opinion has sanctioned for the administration. That’s when they broke up families at the border and they separated people as they crossed the border, children from parents. And shortly after that, Trump’s net approval on immigration fell to minus 30 points—one of his worst statistics ever. His net approval rating overall was minus 20. And I just think that that should be, maybe zooming out here a little bit, proof to some people that these opinions that people have are not set in stone and they can react to the events. In this case, I think the administration’s also perhaps towing the line or has already gone far beyond what the public opinion has sanctioned for deporting certain people. And time to make those same arguments, I would say. If this is true, then let’s see if it’s true and make the arguments and try to test public opinion on it in real life.

Sargent: So there’s a second claim embedded in this media approach of essentially granting Trump potency on this issue, which I think is in some ways even more sinister and misleading; you got at it earlier. It’s the idea that voters will automatically look at the spectacle in California as being primarily about immigration. But why would voters look at it that way? What they’re seeing on their TV screens is American troops being sent into an American city in response to largely peaceful protests. Now, it’s true that the press is magnifying the degree to which there is violence there, and that could tilt opinion maybe toward Trump a little. But that aside, there’s simply no reason to assume, as Axios and NBC did in those things I just read, that this constitutes an issue that’s Trump’s home turf. It’s almost as if voters go through this motion where they say, Oh, well, Trump is doing this because of immigration issues. Therefore I see what he’s doing as being about immigration. And I just don’t think that’s how voters process information. Can you talk about that?

Morris: Yeah, voters, we know by and large…. First off, only about half of America pays attention to this stuff. Let’s just set our expectations [there]. The people who do pay attention to this stuff get their opinions filtered to them, for the most part, through opinion leaders. So that’s people who work for the party, politicians they follow, New York Times columnists, writers at TNR, and some people on Substack. And those people, I guess, are talking about this as an immigration issue in much of the press. Like you pointed out, and I agree, I think they’ve adopted those positions somewhat lazily, but it doesn’t work the other way around. The press is making an assertion in large part that people are going to view this as immigration because it’s about some enforcement in L.A. technically at the very beginning, but it’s not anymore. And if journalists don’t present this de facto as an immigration issue, then most people won’t see it that way. They have an agenda-setting—we say in social science—power in the press, and they should be cognizant of that, especially in a time when political norms and constitutional rights are being violated.

Sargent: Well, let’s step back a little bit and talk a little bit more about the way the media is covering this stuff. We started out by listening to a naked threat of force from Trump. I looked at a few news clippings about that threat, and they all just treated it in an almost matter-of-fact tone; they reported it pretty straight. And similarly, when Trump called for the jailing of Newsom, it wasn’t treated as huge or alarming news. It was just treated as the president said something and, in many cases, it was buried deep in stories, not even a headline—even though the president called for the arrest of a governor of the opposing party based on zero law breaking of any kind. Elliott, can you talk a little bit about why the media is going here? And in a global sense, is authoritarian violence good politics for Trump or not?