President Donald Trump does not like protests, but he definitely likes to use them for his own ends.
Former Trump aides have been vocal for years that the president thinks protests make the country look weak and, by extension, make him look weak. At the same time, he views cracking down on protests as a way of projecting strength.
This familiar dynamic has played out in California over the last few days, as the White House made a show of sending the National Guard and then Marines without a request from the California governor to quell protests over his immigration policies. Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller went even further, calling the protests a “violent insurrection” on social media.
Trump has been champing at the bit for a fight like this since returning to the White House.
It’s obvious that Trump has been champing at the bit for a fight like this since returning to the White House.
He and his administration believe the public is on their side in this dispute. To them, it’s symbolic of everything the president and senior aides think that their supporters hate: undocumented immigrants, urban unrest and Democratic elected officials. On the other side, they see a president using the military to send a message of strength.
In his 2022 book, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that Trump was so enraged about protests in the summer of 2020 that he asked in a meeting: “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Just this past weekend, we had Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in Trump’s first term, on “The Weekend” warning that Trump’s sending the National Guard was not only “the single most significant act” of the administration but also likely a pretext to going further and invoking the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that allows the president to get around the usual restrictions to having the military enforce criminal law within the country.
“We had stopped Donald Trump in 2019 from invoking the Insurrection Act because we and our lawyers didn’t think the way he wanted to do it was legal,” Taylor said. “In fact, I rushed to the White House as he was planning to make the State of the Union address and he wanted to insert a line about how he was invoking the act and deploying the U.S. military on U.S. soil. We felt like that was a dangerous slippery slope.”
Taylor believes the White House knew that the reaction in Los Angeles to last week’s extensive immigration raids would be “protests and then they could use the protest as a response to use the Insurrection Act.” That has not happened yet, but Trump has sent signals that he would like to do it. In the president’s memo over the weekend, he invoked a little known federal law in Title 10 of the U.S. Code that gives the commander in chief the power to deploy National Guard units if the U.S. is invaded or there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or if the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” To understand this moment, you also have to understand Trump’s love of theatrics. When he hires a Cabinet official, it’s important they are loyal but also, just as important, that they look like they are out of “central casting.” He loves the joint sessions of Congress speeches because of the pomp and circumstance. He fell in love with the idea of a military parade after watching Bastille Day in France. For him, any opportunity to look tough is one he rarely passes up. And being able to give red meat to his base, which is the lifeblood of his presidency? Those are the fights he seeks out. Subscribe to the Project 47 newsletter to receive weekly updates on and expert insight into the key issues and figures defining Trump’s second term.
Eugene Daniels is an MS NOW senior Washington correspondent and co-host of "The Weekend." 
