The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 21 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
This week, Stephen Miller unleashed a long, crazed, angry, shrill rant about demonstrators in Washington, D.C., who are protesting President Trump’s military occupation of the city. It was classic authoritarian agitprop, attacking leftists and even communists as rabble-rousers who are secretly trying to make the city more dangerous to the city’s salt-of-the-earth working-class residents. But we think this bizarre Miller episode is best seen as an expression of weakness. 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. The question is: Why won’t Democrats act like it? We keep hearing them saying things like Trump’s militarization of U.S. cities is a distraction, but it’s not a distraction. It’s the main event. Monica Potts, a staff writer at The New Republic, has a great new piece arguing that Trump’s D.C. takeover is very expressly about consolidating power; that calling it a distraction risks diverting us from the importance of what’s happening; and that the opposition party needs to act like it. Good to have you on, Monica.
Monica Potts: Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.
Sargent: So Stephen Miller unleashed this crazed rant about all this on Wednesday. Let’s just dive right in and listen to it.
Stephen Miller (audio voiceover): They’re the ones who have been advocating for the one percent. They’re criminals, they’re killers, they’re rapists, and they’re drug dealers. And I’m glad they’re here today because me, Pete, and the vice president [are] going to leave here. And inspired by them, we’re going to add thousands more resources to this city to get the criminals and the gang members out of here. We’re going to disable those networks, and we’re going to prove that the city can serve for the law-abiding citizens who live there. We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital.
And also just another thing, 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. 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, and all we need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.
Sargent: Monica, a couple of things about this. Note the threat. It’s overt. They’re good to respond to demonstrators with more law enforcement resources pouring into the city. And also note the absurd claim that only white hippies are upset about what’s going on. What are you seeing out there?
Potts: Well, I see people online and in cities taking videos of events where they’re chasing away federal troops or they’re yelling at ICE agents across the country or they’re throwing sandwiches at federal troops in D.C. People are upset, and it’s just regular people who live in cities, who love these cities, who care about these cities, who don’t want to see their cities militarized or become a backdrop for his propaganda—which is what’s happening. And I think it’s really upsetting to a lot of people, even people who—I don’t live in cities. I live in a very small town in upstate New York, and I’m upset. I used to live in D.C. for a very long time and I love that city. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, diverse, electric city, and it shouldn’t be treated this way.
Sargent: It’s so interesting that you make that point that people who are protesting this stuff love their cities. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller see cities as representative of something very different than residents themselves understand it as. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Potts: Yeah. I think some of this is a holdover from the 1980s and ’90s which Trump never left—his brain is still in the ’80s and ’90s. The cities were very different in the 80s and 90s. They were underresourced and they were underappreciated. And it was after white flight and many of them were devastated by the loss of the tax base there. So cities were different then. But in the past 20 years, even a little bit longer, we’ve seen increased urbanization in this country. There are people who are reinvesting in cities, who are thinking about what it means to be an urban citizen and trying to be good neighbors to the people who live there. I love cities. You’ll find some of the kindest neighbors and the most helpful communities in cities. A lot of the stereotypes that we have about small towns are true of cities.
I just think that what we see is this is pandering to his rural and suburban base. There are people who live in small towns in this country who haven’t been to a city in a long time or they only travel to it very briefly. They see things that are unfamiliar to them. They see a lot of people walking around. They’re scared of cities. They have racist stereotypes about who lives there and what happens there. So for them, this might be something that they’re cheering: to see this militarization of a city. It’s based on falsehoods. It’s based on this idea of crime that isn’t there and doesn’t exist anymore.
Sargent: Miller also, in his crazed rant, suggested that Blacks in D.C. will be with Trump on this. But we just got this new Washington Post poll of D.C. residents and it found that 79 percent of them overall oppose Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police on the dispatching of the National Guard. Eighty percent of Blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics are opposed as well. Sure doesn’t sound like it’s confined to white hippies, does it?
Potts: No, not at all. And we’ve been hearing from communities of color, and especially things like the Black Lives Matter movement and related movements, that they want to think about public safety differently. They’ve been protesting the increased militarization of the urban police forces for several years now—or more than a decade now. So having 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. They want cities that are safe for them and their children for sure, but they want to think about public safety in a more nuanced and more community-minded way than modern policing allows for. And we’ve been hearing that for 20 years.
Sargent: I think there’s another game that Miller is playing here as well, which is that when he claims to speak for non-white residents of Washington, D.C., he’s actually talking to the rural and suburban or, maybe more accurately, ex-urban Trump base, right? He’s basically saying, Trump is doing this for the non-whites in the city, and that’s supposed to appeal to non-urban white people.
Potts: Exactly right. Yeah, they don’t want to be challenged on their own beliefs. And so the idea that Black D.C. residents might be with them prevents them from having to deal with their own stereotypes.
Sargent: Right. There’s another point to be made here too. I think that Miller is banking on this idea that non-white working-class people will automatically be with Trump on this. The game is he’s appealing to this idea—a lot of pundits push this as well—that elite white liberals are out of touch with working-class minorities. And that’s the fuel of Trumpism, right? But there’s a lot of hubris here, I think. Trumpists think that because they made some inroads with those communities in 2024 that they can basically scream crime and they’ll get those same voters to mindlessly be all for consolidating authoritarian power and dear leader Trump. But the election was about the cost of living, and Trump’s win was incredibly narrow. There’s a panicky tone to Miller there.
Also, I do think on some level that Miller and the more overtly fascist people around Trump really thought that this was their moment. We see constantly Trump people telling credulous reporters things like this is a fight Trump wants, this is a fight that Democrats can’t take on. And I think that there is some genuine hubris there. What do you think about that?
Potts: I think so. I think they may be sensing the backlash starting or coming 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. They don’t want to stop anytime soon. They don’t want to change course anytime soon.
Sargent: So let’s go through some more polling because it’s still not getting enough attention. A recent Pew poll found that 56 percent of Americans are not confident in Trump’s ability to effectively handle law enforcement in this country versus only 44 percent who are confident. A Reuters poll this week found that only 42 percent approve of Trump’s handling of crime and only 43 percent approve of his handling of immigration, supposedly a strong issue. The key here, I think, is that we’re getting numbers like these even as people’s phones and TV screens are filled with these images we’re talking about of Trump’s various crackdowns, the National Guard in L.A. and D.C., the federal law enforcement swarming D.C. and so forth. Those aren’t the numbers of someone who’s winning the argument. So let’s talk about Dems here. Shouldn’t polling like this be a bigger part of the conversation? And why don’t Dems see an opening?
Potts: I think that’s really the big question. And I think that a lot of people misunderstand a lot of issue polling. Before the election, if you asked people what one of the biggest problems was, a lot of people said immigration. If you ask them the biggest problems in this country, they said immigration. And they thought Trump would be better able to handle immigration. And so you saw Democrats give a lot of ground on immigration. They had negotiated a bill that Trump pressured Republicans to not pass that would have enhanced border security and addressed some of the concerns that people say they have about immigration. But the truth is when people don’t think that deeply about immigration and what it means and what the policy should be.…
There’s actually a lot of opportunity to lead on issues like that and on issues like “crime.” You can say we should make our community safer, but what Trump is doing is not that. He’s leading the military into cities where U.S. citizens are being stopped while they’re trying to make deliveries or while they’re just hanging out with their friends on the sidewalk. Or you can say we do need to deal with immigration, but we need to create a legal pathway for people who were brought here as children without being able to do anything about it because they were too young to make a decision. But what Trump wants to do is break families apart and send people to foreign prisons and do something that [America] doesn’t do, which is close its doors to people who want to work hard.
You can make your own case and people may follow you. People may agree with you because when you dig down into the polling, people don’t think that families should be ripped apart and they don’t think that people should be sent to foreign prisons without being taken in front of a judge. And they don’t think that tanks should be rolling through American streets. And so there’s a way to frame issues and to attack what Trump is doing without risking alienating the public because public opinion is more nuanced than people give it credit for—and certainly more nuanced than people might know just by looking at the top lines from polling.
Sargent: Yeah, and these polls that I just cited before show opposition to having troops in the street fighting crime. It seems like there is an opportunity for Democrats. You wrote very well about this in your piece. You asked why Democrats aren’t in the argument about this and, I think, rightly pointed out that they’re squandering a chance to focus the country on the main event. Can you talk about that a little?
Potts: Yeah. Where are they? Where are they denouncing these troops in Washington, D.C.? It’s unprecedented and it’s arguably [unconstitutional]. And it’s not something that people want to see. And they don’t want to see authoritarian behavior. They don’t want a dictator—and Trump is acting like a dictator. And he praises authoritarians across the country. And that is a winning argument. You can point out the things that he is doing—that Trump is doing as president—that are like what dictators do in other countries. And they’ve been mostly silent. And I think it’s partly because they’re scared of seeming to be on the wrong side of “crime.” But that’s not the point. Trump is not fighting crime. He doesn’t care about the safety of citizens of city. He doesn’t care about the safety of residents of D.C. This is not what those troops are doing when they’re roaming through Georgetown on a weeknight, which is a really nice neighborhood where people go shopping. It’s not where anybody is being a victim of crime.
Sargent: Right. I think on some level, Democrats have just decided that they can’t persuade voters that Trump isn’t actually interested in fighting crime, that he’s using this as a pretext to consolidate power. It’s a ready-made argument. They could connect it to Trump’s kowtowing to Putin—which we’re seeing on the international stage right now—and, as you say, to his sucking up to international dictators. The through line is very clear, but it feels to me like Democrats are squandering an opportunity to make a big case on it.
Potts: I think so because 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. It’s an opportunity to step up. And I think that’s why you see a lot of people who maybe didn’t think very highly of California Governor Gavin Newsom before recently—his social media presence and his political presence right now is very combative and anti-Trump. And people are rallying around that. And it’s because they just want to see someone standing up for their values and fighting for the things that are happening that are bad. They just want that leadership and they want to know where to go and how to direct their anger and their disappointment in what’s happening.
Sargent: The Newsom evolution is probably worth spending a moment on. People might recall that he started out this year with Trump taking power playing footsie with Trumpism. He had clearly determined that the way to the White House in 2028 is to be a Democrat who understands the grievances of Trump supporters in some sense. And so he did right-wing podcasting and stuff like that. But that really was a fiasco. And then events forced Newsom’s hand a little bit—the troop invasion of L.A. and so forth. But as you say, it was when he started to stand up aggressively to Trump and to stand for the people that he represents, that’s when he got more popular.
Potts: That’s right. The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 are not all the MAGA stalwarts, of whom there aren’t that many really. The true Trump fans just aren’t that huge a part of the voting population in the United States. They’re a minority overall. But I think it’s worth understanding why it is that Trump won and what about him may have appealed to some people who would have voted for Biden in 2020 or who might’ve been convinced to not vote for Trump with the right argument or maybe just wanted to give Trump a chance and didn’t believe he would do the worst things that he said he was going to do. There are reasons to explore that coalition and to think about how to maybe appeal to them. But I don’t think there’s any reason to be shy about standing up for the right thing and being on the right side of history, which is I think what we’re talking about now too.
Sargent: I want to close this out by talking about the role of the media in some of this. The New York Times had a big piece earlier this week about how Democrats are nervous that taking all this on might alienate their own voters who don’t like crime. But the piece was remarkably credulous in that it simply assumed that voters will believe that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and takeover of the D.C. police is about fighting crime. The assumption is that voters can’t make the simple leap to see Trump’s talk about crime as a pretext. And so I think there’s a really negative and toxic dynamic here: When the media is credulous about Trump’s ability to win arguments and treats arguments as things that Trump is in control of—as they treat the crime argument—even when he’s not, that persuades Democrats that they can’t take it on. It’s a toxic loop in a way. I don’t see any way out of it, but man, the press is not helping here.
Potts: Yeah. And I don’t see any way out of it either. It’s really tough because Trump says, I’m going to tackle crime in Washington, D.C., and he brings federal troops to Washington, D.C. And so that face level story becomes the first day story. And what we need is the ability to step back and say, Wait a minute, what’s really happening? And so you have this round of stories that are fact checks about crime, which is that crime in the district is actually down historically, which is true. Then you have arguments about whether that’s true in every neighborhood, and people get sucked into talking about crime. And I think it takes a little bit more time and a little bit more energy—and in fairness to the press, I’m not sure that journalism at this moment has time and energy to really think about that. But you have to step back and say, What’s really happening here? And I think that’s the moment that we as journalists have to meet. And I’m not sure how to do it, honestly—how to encourage everyone to step back and do it.
Sargent: Yeah, just to finish this up, watching Stephen Miller rant that way with his voice getting more and more panicky and shrill makes me think that maybe Democrats should try to tell themselves that Trump and his advisers actually aren’t winning these arguments. When you see Stephen Miller do something like that, it really looks to me like he’s losing his shit. That he’s frustrated. He doesn’t understand why people aren’t rallying behind his fascism. He’s using the imagery of crime. Isn’t that supposed to scare people into supporting whatever the leader wants? What do you think Democrats should start doing from here on out?
Potts: Yeah. It’s not too late. I think that they should start calling things like they see them and they should say, You’re not coming to our cities, you’re not coming to our towns with the military, you’re not going to turn this country into a dictatorship. We’re not going to let you gerrymander Texas and take over the House unfairly. We want democratic representation in this country. And you do see Democrats in the state of Texas fighting. They’re fighting their governor’s efforts to change the way that the people of Texas are represented in the U.S. House. And I think that that is really inspiring to people. So it actually, I think, doesn’t take much to find a way to communicate through social media and through the platform that all politicians have to really stand up and say, This is about Trump trying to consolidate power. We remember January 6. We remember when he lied about the election. He’s lied about the integrity of American democracy for years. We’re not going to let him continue to do that. I think there’s still time and I think people would rally behind it. And it would put pressure on Trump, I think.
Sargent: I agree. And the idea that there’s still time is really critical. And Democrats, you know, voters like it when elected leaders fight for them. Monica Potts, thank you so much for coming on. That was a great talk.
Potts: Thank you so much for having me. It’s an important moment and an important topic.