As the president sat in Washington, DC, on Saturday evening, watching a limp, lifeless parade trundle past, surrounded by tens — hundreds, even — of tepidly enthusiastic supporters, the rest of the country made their feelings on these past five months clear. Early estimates from experts have suggested that around five million people were likely out in the streets, in every state and from the biggest cities to small supposedly red towns, protesting the Big Birthday Boy’s assault on the country’s democracy and institutions. The result is perhaps predictable: Donald Trump is having a sad.
“We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” he wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform from which literally nothing emanates except one person’s ravings, a day after staring, dead-eyed and furious, at tanks ripping up DC streets while everyone else participated in what may have been the largest single day of protest in American history. He lied about officials in “Democrat Power Centers” using “illegal aliens” to somehow cheat in elections, and is apparently redirecting ICE from its ongoing reign of terror in agricultural areas, hotels, and restaurants to focus more on big cities in blue states specifically (which isn’t much of a shift, if you’re in Los Angeles, perhaps?).
The announcement, borne in anger not just at the utter failure of his Pyongyang Moment and the surrounding cacophony of nationwide protest but also ICE’s ongoing failure to reach the sorts of obscene arrest numbers he has been promising since his campaign, ignores two inconvenient truths: there are both millions of undocumented immigrants, and increasingly loud dissent and protest, in red states too.
While the largest population of undocumented immigrants is indeed in California, the second- and third-largest are in Texas and Florida. And while big cities in red states do tend to be Democratic strongholds in voting terms, Trump’s latest crackdown does not seem to be coming for Houston, or Dallas, or Tampa, or Miami. The protesters, however, are. The events — which, again, may have been bigger than any the country has ever seen, and which appear to have somehow melted off of legacy media’s homepages within hours — covered every state in FUCK ICE and NO KINGS signs, regardless of how it voted in November.
Big cities in red states, yes — Houston saw something like 26,000 people, for example, and Louisville had around 4,000 take to the streets, not to mention the flagship event in Philadelphia (whose state did, somehow, vote for Trump) that drew upwards of 80,000. But also smaller, deep red spots — like the 29 No Kings events in Montana, including 2,000 people in Billings but also, just for example, 600 in Livingston (population 8,900). As many as 8,000 marched in Little Rock, along with smaller numbers in Bentonville, Fort Smith, Monticello, and the rest of Arkansas; we could keep doing this, for literally every state.
In the face of such widespread opposition, Trump will writhe and flail and increase the sum total of misery in the world through his various agents of chaos and ruin. But the only response he is ever capable of when faced with rebuke — escalation — won’t make the next day of protest any smaller. None of what he is doing — none of it — is at all popular; he’s hearing this more and more.
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