As the veteran GOP strategist dares to suggest Trump is losing ground big time on immigration, an elections analyst looks at why Trump is faltering on his number one issue—and how Dems can capitalize.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 6 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
A whole lot is happening for President Trump on the immigration front. Trump just rolled out a plan to pay undocumented immigrants $1,000 to self-deport. And Trump just made some dark comments about the Supreme Court, suggesting that the justices had better rule his way on this issue or they’ll face the wrath of the people—meaning the wrath of MAGA. All this comes as Karl Rove, of all people, just hit Trump with a surprising warning on this issue. Rove said Trump is undermining his own standing on immigration. And the way Rove made this point captures something essential about this moment, so we’re going to unpack all of this with Lakshya Jain, co-founder of the election site Split Ticket. Lakshya, good to have you on.
Lakshya Jain: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: Let’s start with what President Trump said about the Supreme Court. To catch people up, the courts have said in several cases now that migrants he’s deporting are entitled to due process, and that the administration must facilitate the return of wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Trump seems angry about all this. Here’s what he said to reporters while on a plane.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): The people elected me in a landslide with every single ... We won every swing state. We won everything there is to win by big numbers. Not only swing state, we won the popular vote by millions of votes. They elected me. This was a number-one issue. And now we have judges that are radicalized and they’re crazy. Because they want us to have ... If you believe this, they want us to have a trial for every person that came in illegally into our country. So they come into our country illegally and then we’re supposed to take weeks, I guess, and months to have a trial on every criminal that we have, murderers all over the country? I don’t think the Supreme Court will stand for that, and I can’t believe it. Because you know what? If they do, we’re not going to have a country.
Sargent: Now this is nonsense. Trump and Republicans won’t spend more to beef up immigration courts, which would process migrants faster. But that aside, Lakshya, Trump and Stephen Miller are getting more vocal about their real position, which is to end due process entirely for large numbers of migrants. This is a warning to the high court—that they’ll face backlash if they don’t side with Trump on ending due process. They seem to think this is a winner for them. I think it’s not. What are your thoughts, Lakshya?
Jain: It’s funny that Trump is choosing this, of all the issues, because if you had to pick an issue on which the Democratic Party is just not trusted at all by the American public, it would be immigration. That is an issue where Democrats are far and away way less trusted historically and recently than the Republican Party. Yet this is the one particular case where if you have to fight about immigration as a Democrat, this is probably the case to do it because the specifics of it are really bad for Trump. And it’s not due to anything about Abrego Garcia as a person. It has to do with the fact that a lot of American voters just believe that the Trump administration is overstepping their constitutional authority here, even as they may give him the benefit of the doubt slightly on immigration. This is one case where even that approach gets pushed and they’re like, Hold on. No, this is a little bit too far for us.
Sargent: Yeah, and it actually is broader than just Abrego Garcia, right? I think it goes to due process more generally for migrants. Remember, they’re trying to end due process for as many migrants as they can. We had this Post poll recently that found that a majority of independents—52 percent—opposed sending undocumented immigrants who are suspected criminals to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing. That’s the key: without a hearing. Lakshya, that tells me there’s a pretty decent chance that for the middle of the country, due process matters. What do you think?
Jain: It does. It plainly does. I think we’ve seen this over and again. It’s just one of those things where the specifics of the issue are really bad for the Republicans, because denying people due process has never gone down well with the American public. And I think that’s a large part of the reason why Trump, when he raises the salience of this ... Well, he’s already getting slammed by the American public on stuff to do with economics, stuff to do with taxes. He’s already losing their trust. This is not something where they’re giving him really favorable marks, partly because they’re mad at everything else and partly because he’s picking the wrong angle to fight on.
Sargent: I think that’s exactly right. And this brings me to Karl Rove. Listen to what he said over the weekend.
Karl Rove (audio voiceover): ... Going out there and saying, for example, This guy from Maryland, I don’t know whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. I don’t know if he’s a gang member or not. But the fact is, bring him back to the United States, lay out the facts in a court of law, and get it done. It does no good to let that thing go out there for four or five weeks and eat away at the president’s approval on immigration. Take a look at the difference between approval ratings on the border, where he is in positive territory by good margin, and handling the issue of immigration, which includes these other things. It’s significantly less, and he’s upside down.
Sargent: Lakshya, we should note that it’s a bit rich for Karl Rove to be talking about renditions this way given George W. Bush’s record. But still, there are a couple of really important things here. First, note that Rove says the Abrego Garcia thing is eating away at Trump’s broader approval on immigration. It’s extremely rare that you hear a Republican say something like that. What do you think of it?
Jain: Yeah, I think Karl Rove is correct here, which is crazy for me as a Democrat to say. I never thought I’d be saying I agree with Karl Rove, but he is correct that Trump’s handling of the Garcia case is actually eroding his standing on the immigration issue. And it’s gotten to the point where he’s actually, I would say, lost his edge on immigration entirely. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the data—whether it’s the Times/Siena poll, whether it’s Blue Rose’s data—everywhere shows Donald Trump is not popular in immigration any longer. And I think a large part of the reason is because he’s insistent on fighting the angle that migrants do not deserve due process. And that, people start to get a little bit queasy with. They may not like migrants being here, but they also don’t like the attitude of deporting them without a hearing. That seems to be a little bit of an overstep.
Sargent: And that is really the Trump/Stephen Miller position right now. To go back to what he said about the Supreme Court, he’s basically putting the Supreme Court on notice, If you make us give due process to migrants, well, you’re not going to have a country anymore. Which is his coded way of saying the wrath of MAGA is going to be unleashed, because for MAGA, it’s all about preserving the country from these invaders and so forth, right? Here Trump is essentially saying straight out, This is our issue. We’re going to fight to the death on the insistence that we don’t have to give due process to migrants.
Jain: Yeah, and I think some of this comes down to the veil of invincibility that the Trump administration has been operating with. A lot of it has come down to them saying, Well, we won the election so we can do what we want. And if anything showed us from 2016 to 2020 and then 2020 to 2024, it’s that the American public forgives a lot. And while they may be, in a sense, right that the American public is inclined to forgive a lot, that’s usually not something that’s true if the economy is going poorly. Once that happens, you start losing all types of battles everywhere. Because voters, when they’re mad, [it’s] you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is also part of why you see Kamala Harris’s declining numbers throughout the campaign. It’s partly because of this: Voters are mad at Biden and they were like, Well, we’re not going to give her the benefit of the doubt on anything.
Again, the Trump–Steven Miller angle here, which is to go and deport the migrants, don’t give them due process and everything—if you had a roaring stock market and a great economy, you may be able to get away with that. But when people don’t have confidence about how you’re running the country, that’s going to extend elsewhere.
Sargent: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I want to highlight one other thing from Rove from that clip we listened to, because it’s key the distinction he made between the border and immigration as separate issues. Trump is all about trying to conflate these two, so everything is always about the border, the border, the border, we have to have a secure border. But it’s absolutely right that immigration is its own issue in the sense that it turns on questions like, What do we do about undocumented immigrants in this country right now? What do we do about the Dreamers? What do we do about Abrego Garcia, and so forth?
That’s an area where Trump is not necessarily that strong because his extremism suddenly bleeds through very rapidly and becomes clear to, I think, the middle of the country once the specifics start, like the deportations. We’re seeing more and more news accounts of people who are getting deported wrongly or getting literally kidnapped off the streets. So for Karl Rove to say, Mr. President, you’re conflating the border and immigration and you’re losing on immigration, is really striking to me.
Jain: It is. It’s very striking to me too. The border as an issue is basically the Republicans’ old reliable; it’s their old faithful. If you start losing the trust advantage on that, you’re losing one of the issues that propelled the party to the White House again, that gave them control of Congress, and that actually powered a lot of their gains in the southern border region of the U.S. So it’s worrying if you’re the Republican Party and you’re suddenly seeing that your president is losing the issue advantage on this type of thing. How are you going to hold on to all of your new voters?
And Greg, if I can point out one thing, it’s that raising the salience and conflating the border issue with immigration as a whole is a big mistake for Trump. What we’re seeing and what we saw is that a lot of immigrants actually swung to Trump in this last election. We had a Post piece that talked all about it where we said that it’s really striking how in New York, New Jersey, and all these other areas, Trump made a lot of gains with immigrant voters, which you would not have expected. But if you’re starting to conflate the border with stripping migrants of due process and deporting even legal immigrants, that’s where you start to wonder, Is that the angle to pick? Is that the battle to fight? Because now you’re picking something which could actually eat into your support with regular immigrant voters. And that might be a problem for the Trump administration politically speaking, too, because those are new voters that aren’t really super attached to them.
Sargent: Exactly. Voted on cost of living.
Jain: Exactly. Exactly.
Sargent: Well, I want to read some more data out from G. Elliott Morris, who’s a data analyst as well, and I want to try to get at a particular thing about this issue—which is that the polling on deportations is really, really screwed up. We often get public polls which do something along the lines of saying, OK, do you think undocumented immigrants should be deported, yes or no? And you often get a majority saying yes, because what is being offered to them is a choice of law being enforced versus law not being enforced. But when you start digging into the specifics, you get something different. G. Elliott Morris found that on the question of deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, 37 points underwater; deporting undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens by birth, 36 points underwater; deporting undocumented immigrants who have not broken laws in the U.S. except for immigration laws, 18 points underwater; and so forth.
So what you have is as soon as the complexities of the situation for many of these undocumented people is explained to voters, they suddenly aren’t so sure they want them removed. I think this is a problem in our public opinion discourse, don’t you, Lakshya? We have to get beyond this tendency of public pollsters to just say, Do you want illegals removed, yes or no?
Jain: Well, I’ve said for a long time, Greg, I think issue polling is in many ways broken in America. And that’s not to say that positions that are unpopular are popular, or that positions that are popular are actually unpopular. I think issue polling is in general broken in the way it’s conducted, broken in the way we use it.
Let me start with this. When you have a poll that says something like, Do you support blank? it’s important to remember that the public hasn’t really been given a presentation of what’s going on as either side would frame it. So you have to be really careful in how you interpret it. Secondly, the devil is often in the details. For an issue like immigration, of course you’re going to get people saying, Yeah, I want you to deport all illegals. That’s obviously what the voters are going to say. Now, if you use that to say, Well, that’s that, voters have spoken, they want this, but you don’t look into the specifics, you’ll find that that actually opens up a lot of political trap doors and a lot of issues where neither side should be ignoring them.
And I think the Garcia case is a perfect example. Because had you polled right after the election, Do you think migrants with suspected gang ties should be sent to a foreign prison, even if it circumvents due process? I think you could probably get better poll numbers than what you’re getting right now. The thing is, when it’s actually implemented and people realize what’s going on, they react very differently, because issue polling cannot really properly capture the attitudes of the public until it’s properly elevated into the mainstream—unless you’re very careful with how you phrase it. Abortion is another great example of this, by the way.
Sargent: It’s interesting you say that because Democrats are very willing, obviously, to engage on abortion, but they’re still pretty skittish about engaging on immigration. And to your point, on these specifics, Democrats could be turning this issue into a winner for themselves by engaging on the specifics, along the lines of how majorities oppose deportations for people in the U.S. more than 10 years or who haven’t broken any laws other than immigration laws. These are places where Democrats can pick fights and win. Abrego Garcia, they can pick fights and win.
It seems to me, Lakshya—and I want to ask you about this—that if they don’t do that, they actually play into Trump’s hands in the following way. Trump and Stephen Miller, again, want everything to be about the border. They want everything to be about crime, right? We need unshackled power; otherwise, we won’t be able to get public safety under control. If Democrats don’t engage on the issue, they let Stephen Miller and Trump frame it that way. Whereas when they point out the specific things that Trump is doing, they make it harder for Trump and Stephen Miller to move the subject to something that favors them. What do you think? Am I right or wrong about that?
Jain: I’ve said a combination of things on this. Trump’s approval on cost of living is like minus 15, which is actually atrocious. And Trump’s approval, when it comes to immigration, is like minus three or minus four. And so salience-wise, if you want to talk about an issue and only one issue, it would be cost of living. But with that said, I’ve never really felt that that is the way to approach it for two reasons. Firstly, the issue with the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case goes way beyond just numbers and public opinion. You have to know what those numbers are to pick your battles appropriately and to know how to frame it, but the fact remains that if you let a president basically ignore a Supreme Court order, that opens the door to a lot of terrible things later on. So just from the beginning—because I know everyone has this criticism about poll nerds—I think that angle of not engaging because you’re doing better on cost of living is a terrible idea.
Now, secondly, Greg, to your point, I think that you’re not going to turn a 30–70 issue into a 70–31 from engaging on it, and this is the mistake that a lot of activists and organizers make. But I also think that when an issue is 50–50, you can eat away into the president’s support with a critical block of voters if you can frame it correctly and if you can go on the offensive. I think public opinion is malleable to some degree. And the realities of the case are really bad for Trump to the point where I do think that if Democrats were smart in how they engaged on it and avoided the emotional appeals and just stuck to, This is a violation of due process rights, they could not only make some gains but also neutralize the trust advantage that Republicans enjoy on a very pertinent and potent issue. Which I think is critical because otherwise this is always going to come up.
And if you’re going to lose a battle now, you may as well lose it in May 2025 rather than 2026, because this is not the only time immigration is going to come up. You’re going to have to fight about it at some point, and this is probably the issue that you want to fight about.
Sargent: And as Karl Rove is warning, it’s actually eroding, that broader support on immigration generally. Just to close this out, Lakshya, what do you think of this proposal to pay undocumented immigrants $1,000 to self-deport? I want to point out before we get to your answer, we’re back to Mitt Romney’s 2012 position. People may forget this, but in those days, the Republican position was self-deport, not end due process completely. It looks to me like this is not something the middle of the country will go for: handing taxpayer money to undocumented immigrants who might have jobs here, who might have roles in communities, who might be, at this point, pretty Americanized to leave. I don’t see it. What do you think?
Jain: Again, I think a lot of this comes down to the angle the Democrats choose to fight it with. I don’t think that’s going to be popular, but I also think if you choose to go on this from a “no human is illegal” angle, you’re going to lose the specifics and you’re going to lose the battle. I think if you go on it from an angle of, “This is costing taxpayers a lot of money for something stupid; why don’t you find them, and then for the ones that have been productive for this country, send them to the back of the line and give them a temporary permit or something,” if you engage on it in that sense, that’s actually Obama 2008, Obama 2012. And you could actually win on that angle.
I think the mistake here is mostly that when our party—I say our because I’m a Democrat—sees this type of suggestion of ... It’s absurd on its face, paying immigrants $1,000 to self-deport. Firstly, that’s not nearly enough financial incentive to get someone to leave the United States of America for their home country. And secondly, it’s a ridiculous idea in implementation, conceptualization, and how it would even work. But if you start going with the angle of, “This is abominable because no human is illegal,” understand that battle’s already been lost. We’ve lost that battle over and again in the court of public opinion. What we haven’t lost on is that this guy is wasting taxpayer money at a time when money is already tight for the American people. Why are you doing that instead of fining them $5,000? Instead of rewarding them, say, Hey, you’re fined $5,000, now go to the back of the line. Maybe we can give you a work permit, but you’re going to have to start over again.
Sargent: Exactly. By the way, what has not been lost by Democrats is the argument over what we should do with people who are here, have been here for a long time, and have become productive members of U.S. society. That one is a winner for Democrats still. Lakshya Jain, always great to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.
Jain: Thanks, Greg.
S
argent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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