Is the public on board with Trump's troop deployment?

Michael Barone thinks so.

Paul has assessed with characteristic balance whether there was a legal basis, and a need, for Trump to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles over the “You’re-a-fascist” howls of Gov. Brylcream Newsom. Paul concluded, and I agree, that there was both. I now want to address the different question whether the electorate, on the whole, supports Trump’s move.

I have plenty of help in Michael Barone’s piece in the Washington Examiner. In my view, Barone has more political insight than anyone else in the media. On election night, I try to find out which network has Barone taking the temperature of the early returns and watch that one (it’s usually Fox).

He starts out by noting that, despite what you might think from reading the standard line in the MSM, Trump’s political position before the riots was average for recent Presidents at the same point in their second term:

His job approval, which jutted downward after he announced his “liberation day” tariffs on April 2, has recovered and hovers just below 50%. That’s just about the level of Barack Obama’s and George W. Bush’s approval at this point in their second terms and above his own approval at any point in his first term.

Barone doesn’t say so, but this strikes me as remarkable, given the tone and extent of the MSM’s hyperbolic treatment. We’ve all heard it: Trump is an authoritarian, a dictator, a king, the second coming of Hitler, etc. Bush, by contrast, was merely (choose one) (a) a wahoo Texas cowboy or (b) a standard elitist country club dope.

Many continue to regard some top appointments as eccentric. His style of discourse, OFTEN IN ALL CAPS, is eccentric by any past presidential standard. But in a political system that remains democratic and is increasingly demotic, that which sounds coarse to you (and me) is apparently acceptable to most people.

Barone’s view of the public acceptance of Trump’s behavior is likely true — a mixed blessing at best in my view — but his passing off some of the top appointments as merely “eccentric” is too generous. It would really be best if the Director of National Intelligence quit writing cryptic messages on X about nuclear war. It would also be best if the Attorney General were less strident and partisan, and if the people around her, for example, Emil Bove, were less politically-centered, less rude, and more aware that their standing and ultimately their success for the administration will depend more on their reputation with the Court as honest and fair-minded advocates and less on their ability to mimic Trump’s big mouth.

Candidate Donald Trump in 2024 promised that he would eliminate shortfalls in military recruitment, which he attributed to the Biden Pentagon’s “woke” policies. He pointed out accurately that the Army and Navy fell short of recruitment goals by as much as 25% in fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

As defense secretary, he named Fox News host and military veteran Pete Hegseth, saying he’d promote a warfighting ethos that would attract un-woke young men and women to join up. The Army raised its recruiting goal from 55,000 to 61,000 and reached it in May, four months early.

Maybe that’s a coincidence or a response to other factors. But it looks like Trump’s rhetoric made a big difference.

What the Left claims it abhors is Trump’s gigantic ego and his bull-in-the-china-shop, Big Shot Boss persona. Trump does his best to make those claims plausible — rendering it easier than usual for the Left to hide that what it actually abhors is his success in doing things it doesn’t like, such as rebuilding America’s military strength.

Meanwhile, the May job numbers in the U.S. increased by a more-than-expected 139,000, despite a 60,000 reduction in federal jobs since January. And despite a drop of foreign-born workers in the labor market estimated between 773,000 and 1,000,000 since March.

Three-quarters of a million to a million — those numbers dwarf the number of annual deportations from the interior of the U.S.

By the way, has anyone seen that recession the press was so eager to advertise just a few weeks ago?

These numbers put in perspective the drama that has been playing out in Los Angeles this past week. The Trump administration cannot expect that it can, logistically, remove all the untold millions of illegal immigrants that whoever was running the Biden administration (no one, including the authors of Original Sin, has disclosed just who that was) allowed into the U.S. But splashy raids and deportations can get hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of illegal immigrants thinking about what Mitt Romney in 2012 called “self-deportation.”

Which is probably happening thanks to what has been happening in Los Angeles these past five days. Demonstrations against ICE deportation activity resulted in the arrest of the head of the SEIU, the big government employees’ union.

This is a point I’ve seen only from Barone, and it’s important. Just as crime generally cratered for an entire generation once we showed that we were going to hire more police and put thousands more hoodlums in jail, the deterrent value of visible and unapologetic immigration enforcement can’t be overstated.

The bottom line shouldn’t be a surprise:

There’s no question whose side the public is on. A pre-riot CBS poll showed 54% approving of Trump’s deportation program, and two polls taken this week showed approval, Insider Advantage by 59% to 39%, and the Napolitan News poll by 58% to 36%.

After eight years of stark contrast between Trump and Democrats’ policies, as CNN poll analyst Harry Enten points out, most voters give Trump high marks and “believe that Democrats don’t have a clue on the issue of immigration.”

What do you think is really driving the Democrats to their current level of frenzy? That Trump is fixin’ to become King George? Or that he exposes their ineptitude and the harm they’ve done to the country in a way they can no longer hide?

UPDATE: My friend Ed Whelan, a very astute lawyer, thinks that Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco is about to rule against Trump:

I just listened to the 70-minute hearing that federal district judge Charles Breyer held on California’s motion for a temporary restraining order against President Trump’s nationalization of the California national guard. It’s clear to me that Judge Breyer will rule that Trump failed to comply with 10 U.S.C. § 12406 by failing to issue his order “through” Governor Newsom.

Newsom has argued more broadly that section 12406 requires that he consent to the nationalization of the state national guard. That position got zero attention during the entire hearing, and I think it’s plainly wrong.

Judge Breyer indicated that he hopes to issue his ruling very soon, probably today. Before he does, President Trump should re-issue his order to and “through” Newsom. That would completely undercut Breyer’s ground for prospective relief.