Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term, tore into the administration's handling of its relationship with Canada in a new Substack post.

"Canada is demonstrating, for every democracy watching, that the response to Trump’s bullying should be neither submission nor hysteria… but the calm construction of alternatives," he wrote. "Our allies aren’t leaving because they hate America. They’re leaving because they miss us, and they can’t stand the bully who’s holding us hostage."

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[–] 13 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

A year ago they'd be kinda sorta right.

Donald's miscalculation was thinking that people supporting a mass deportation meant support for a Gestapo rebrand of ICE. Ever since LA, Chicago, Portland, and Minnesota he has been DEEPLY unpopular and the 2025 and 2026 elections (so far) represent that unpopularity well. Watching grown men chase down and tackle fifth graders and shooting people in the street pissed a lot of people off.

But yes, calling him popular now is willfully incorrect given the data we have.

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  • [–] 7 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

    That’s part of it. The other part is there seems to be a looooot of local activation for data centers, flock cameras, and book bans. On a local level people are turning out to scream at their local officials, at a level I have never seen. I may be an optimist, but the American people seem to be more plugged in. The sky high gas rates for a pointless war of choice isn’t helping his cause any either. Don’t get me wrong the ICE stuff is a goddamn travesty, but there’s so much other bull shit going on too that we seem to have a lot of really strange coalitions forming these days.

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  • [–] 6 points 13 hours ago* (1 child)

    Yes, the Iran War was the proverbial nail in the coffin.

    The only reason he got elected by such a diverse coalition is that Joe Biden and Harris were gaslighting people on the economy and largely disconnected from the struggle of the poor and middle class, and Republicans ran on affordability.

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  • [–] 3 points 12 hours ago

    This. The republicans have completely failed on the “affordability” narrative to the point where their own base isn’t buying it anymore. Between defunding healthcare and the real time impacts of DOGE fucking up, well gestures vaguely at everything. It’s almost impossible to pick a single unifying issue since there is so much fucked up right now. I think it’s hard to build a narrative because there’s so much discontent but there’s so many angry people that I can’t call Trump popular.

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