Here comes the cavalry
One thing we learned from the previous Trump era is that public protests are a mixed bag in terms of their effectiveness. The mass protests in early 2017 certainly sent a message that we weren’t going to take Trump’s abuses quietly. But after that we did have to shift into more of a politically strategic approach, targeting specific legislation and such with calculated political pressure in order to keep slowing Trump’s agenda.
That probably explains why we didn’t see mass protests against Trump right off the bat when he was named the winner in November 2024, or when he first took office in January 2025. Protests weren’t going to stop him from taking office. Nor were they going to stop him from taking huge, corrupt, unhinged swings as soon as he got into office. If anything, this time around we needed the general public – not his base, but the people in the middle who don’t love or hate him – to see him starting to make a mess before any protests would mean anything.
The good news is that, with all the damage Trump has indeed tried to do right off the bat, there is strong momentum against him already. His approval rating is way down. The consumer confidence index is down. Wall Street appears to be giving up on him. And Trump is out there proudly taking credit for the drastic moves that have resulted in eggs being unaffordable and airplanes falling out of the sky. Trump also hasn’t done himself any favors by laying off a large chunk of his own supporters, while also trying to take away their Medicaid.
So now we have momentum. And accordingly, we now have growing protests as well. There have been mass protests in Times Square against Trump’s Ukraine antics. JD Vance couldn’t go on vacation without facing protests. And House Republicans can’t hold a town hall without facing angry pushback from their constituents – many of whom are Republican voters.
The protests have made enough of a mark that Trump and his regime are trying to push back against them by claiming that these protesters are all paid Democratic Party operatives. Nice try. Imagine voting for Trump (or not caring who won), then finding out Trump is a disaster, going out to protest against him (or agreeing with the sentiment of the protesters), and then hearing Trump claim that you’re a paid plant. If anything, such talk is only going to leave Trump with even less credibility.
It’s fair to say that the cavalry has arrived, in terms of growing public protests. What’s important is that these protests have happened organically, and it’s not just coming from people like us. These are people who didn’t do the smart thing in November, and now wish they had. Now they’re on our side, helping to build the narrative that Trump is a disaster. We’ll keep doing what we do with calculated political pressure and activism. The protesters are only going to make our efforts all the more effective.
