Any notion that the second Trump administration would prove less turbulent than the first has surely been laid to rest by the accidental leaking of secret military plans to a journalist on the messaging app Signal. But Trump’s political opponents aren’t in too great a state themselves. Fresh off the Democratic Party’s presidential election defeat last November, their popularity has plummeted – a recent CNN poll has placed the Democrats’ favourability rating at just 29 per cent, a record low since their polling began in 1992.
The inquest into Kamala Harris’s comprehensive defeat is still going on. Indeed, the bitter recriminations among Democrats make the Reform standoff between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe seem like a trivial tiff. Put simply, Democrats are split over how aggressively they should attack Trump.
One side of the party – epitomised by Democratic senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who recently supported the passage of a key Republican-led budget bill – advocates a more cautious style of opposition in the hope the American public grows increasingly disaffected with the Trump White House. “Considering how much Trump and Musk have alienated such broad swathes of the public, Democrats don’t have to [currently] do much to benefit politically,” says Richard Goodstein, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to the Clintons.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has taken a cautious approach to dealing with the Trump administration, recently supporting the passage of a Republican-led budget bill – Bloomberg
On the other side is the more liberal wing of the Democrat party (headed by representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), which wants to take on Trump at his own belligerent game. It is this, however, that appears to pose more of a threat to the Democrats’ electoral prospects – because when Left-wing politicians and celebrities throw punches at Trump in the ring, they can easily end up falling flat on the canvas.
Republican strategists believe liberals’ attacks are backfiring because they still don’t understand their adversary. “The Democrats have been frantically insisting to the American public for 10 years that Trump is a Hitlerian dictator and that everyone who supports him is complicit in fascism,” says Republican political commentator Kristin Tate. She added: “The Democrats’ screams about Trump mostly fall on deaf ears. They have made themselves into irrelevant fools.
“The majority of voters don’t care what these media people or celebrities say or think. They have proven to be exactly what they told us Trump was: power-hungry and willing to do anything, including lie and rig an election [by subverting the Democratic process in their own presidential primary], to stay in power.”
“The Democrats seem to be flailing around in the wilderness at the moment and the more strident their opposition, the more the moderate voter gets turned off,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran political consultant and president of North Star Opinion Research. “The energy in the party is on the Left and the Bernie Sanders and AOCs [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] of the world are getting a lot of attention but those are precisely the kinds of people who could never win an election in America.”
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, have captured the energy of their voters – Reuters
Steve Hilton, Lord Cameron’s former director of strategy, recently belittled the Democrats’ increasingly bellicose opposition to Trump. “It gets more and more over the top, lower and lower frankly, but this is what they seem to want in the Democratic Party now,” he told Fox News. “They want this kind of rhetoric, they want this kind of attitude. I don’t think it’s helping them at all.”
The attacks on Trump by liberal showbiz stars have been equally unsuccessful in moving the political dial. “I personally don’t like much of what Trump is doing but it makes no difference when celebrities attack him at events and premieres or on podcasts,” says Cynthia Parsons McDaniel, who has headed public relations for three different Hollywood studios. “Just like people get punk’d, I think the public now feel as though they’re being Trump’d when they hear the criticism.”
But she added the rancorous resistance to Trump won’t go away soon: “This is a runaway train that is not stopping – and there will be plenty of crazy stations along the way.”
The Left-leaning figures inadvertently fuelling support for Trump
Jasmine Crockett
When it comes to over-the-top outrage against Donald Trump, progressive Texas Democrat, congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has elevated verbal vigilantism into an art form. Crockett, 43, described Trump’s stance on Greenland as “really psychotic” and when asked after his address to a joint session of Congress what she would like to tell the president, Crockett replied, “I would tell him to grow a spine and stop being Putin’s ho.” Asked last month if she had a message for Elon Musk, Crockett replied “F— off!” This week’s controversy saw Crockett dubbing Texas governor, Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels”. In case we hadn’t got the message, Crockett reckons the Democrats should be “OK with punching”.
Credit: HRC – Human Rights Campaign
Carrie Coon
The White Lotus, HBO-Sky Atlantic’s luxury hotel drama, currently ranks among the hottest shows on TV. One of the standout scenes in the third series came when two female liberal coastal elite characters shamed their Texas-residing friend by awkwardly pressing her if she’d voted for Trump. One of those two characters, Laurie, is played by actress Carrie Coon and given her own political opinions, life is not merely imitating art but surpassing it. Coon, 44, described the Trump presidency on X (formerly Twitter) as “the biggest grift – maybe in human history. And this administration will cost us any possibility of a livable planet”. As for the GOP’s policy objectives? “All they want is to squeeze workers and get rich and all of you Maga dumba–es are playing right into their hands.” Coon also opined, “One thing is for certain: JD Vance is a huge a–hole” and that “Doge’s [Department of Government Efficiency’s] recklessness will kill people.”
Rachel Zegler
Disney’s recent live-action remake of Snow White spectacularly flopped, and the outspoken political activism of lead actress Rachel Zegler is a contributing factor. After Trump’s election victory, Zegler, 23, wrote on Instagram: “F— Donald Trump”, adding in another message, “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” While Zegler subsequently apologised for her tirade and dialled down her political activism in the run-up to the release of Snow White, the damage was done. Zegler will be playing the title role in a West End revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita this summer so she likely won’t be impressed when she discovers Lord Lloyd-Webber was a social acquaintance and New York Trump Tower neighbour of the president during the 1980s.
Tim Walz
While Kamala Harris has maintained a dignified silence since her resounding defeat last November, the same cannot be said for her tiggerish running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who continues to find new ways of sticking his foot into his mouth. Walz, 60, last week quipped at an event that he boosts his mood by monitoring how fast Tesla stock drops. Following a backlash that a prominent politico would take such delight in the stock market tanking, Walz walked back his remarks, insisting “I was making a joke. These people have no sense of humour…my point was they are all mad and I said something I probably shouldn’t have about a company.” It wasn’t the first time Walz has recently laid into Republican voters – on fellow Democrat governor Gavin Newsom’s podcast, he strangely remarked about his masculinity: “I think I scare them a little bit, [which is] why they spend so much time on me … I think I could kick most of their ass.” Charming…
Governor Tim Walz recently had to walk back comments about taking delight in Tesla’s falling stock market value – AP
Rosie O’Donnell
Comedian Rosie O’Donnell has been feuding with President Trump for nearly two decades. Following her tormentor’s election triumph, O’Donnell, 63, left the United States to move to Ireland (although losing her Malibu home in the LA fires also had something to do with it). However, O’Donnell has immediately raised eyebrows in the Emerald Isle by bizarrely appearing to dispute the validity of the 2024 election. “I question why the first time in American history a president has won every swing state and is also best friends and his largest donor was a man who owns and runs the Internet,” she said on RTÉ’s The Late, Late Show, seemingly referencing Elon Musk. “I would hope that would be investigated and that we would see whether or not it was an anomaly or something else that happened on election night in America when Kamala Harris was filling up stadiums with people who supported her and Donald Trump was not able to do that.” Given O’Donnell admitted during Trump’s first term to spending “about 90 per cent of my waking hours tweeting hatred toward this administration”, this is unlikely to be the last time she confronts the commander in chief.
Megan Rapinoe
Some celebrity critics of Trump’s first term seem quieter this time round (film journalists recently interviewing his arch foe Robert De Niro were surprised to be asked to not to bring up the subject of politics.) Not much-decorated retired American women’s football player and liberal activist Megan Rapinoe, who didn’t exactly hold back on her dismay over Trump’s executive order seeking to block transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. “Don’t tell me it’s about the rights of women’s sports,” Rapinoe told football publication Mundial. “That is totally just disingenuous to say that. I think it’s just really cruel. You know, if you strip it all back, it’s just kind of cruel and depraved. This isn’t an issue, and you aren’t going to be able to executive order trans people out of existence.” Not for the first time Rapinoe brought profanity into the mix when discussing President Trump: “People [should] stop just sh—ing on women’s sports”.
J B Pritzker
The runners and riders for the next Democratic presidential nominee sprang out of the gate the day after the last election and a long shot is Illinois governor JB Pritzker. That shot has now got considerably longer since Pritzker’s vision seemingly consists of expressing blind hatred towards the opposing side. Pritzker, 60, used his “state of the state and budget address” at the Illinois General Assembly to directly compare the Trump administration to Nazi Germany: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic… when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from getting out of control.” Subsequently, pugnacious Pritzker was afforded the opportunity by dry public policy think-tank Centre for American Progress to outline his political philosophy in a speech entitled “A Better Way Forward”. Instead he impersonated a millennial YouTuber, saying, “Donald Trump has handed over the reins of power to Elon Musk and his fellow Doge-bags…the meme lords and the minions in the White House conceive of themselves as kings and nobles who have the divine right to order the world in a way that best suits them and their fellow kleptocrats.”
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