This is being orchestrated to a tee by Steve Bannon. Bannon is playing the long game. He knows that one way or the other Donald Trump won’t be on the scene forever and he has a lot invested in MAGA and his War Room. He intends that they continue, Trump or no Trump, and you see the same attitude with Fox News. Many years ago it was said that if you had to bank on one or the other, Rupert Murdoch or Trump, bet on Murdoch. Fox News has Jessica Tarlov on daily because they’re easing the audience into whatever comes in a post Trump era. You can’t go wrong playing all the bases. Something has to click. So with that in mind, listen to Steve Bannon talk to members of the base. It’s getting very hot in the MAGA kitchen.
There doesn’t seem to be much room for negotiation. So what is Trump to do? Because he’s fighting wars on other fronts. A new report shows Trump frantically calling Kristi Noem because of the protests over immigration arrests and deportations.
A panicked Donald Trump phoned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to slam the brakes on his coast-to-coast immigration raids after furious street protests erupted across the country, according to a new report.
The bombshell revelation from Reuters comes after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller set an aggressive quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day in late May, following through on Trump’s campaign promise to carry out what he called the “largest domestic deportation operation” in U.S. history.
But the massive crackdown quickly backfired, sparking nationwide protests in June that started in Los Angeles, where Trump dispatched 4,000 National Guard troops that he said were needed to quell demonstrations—over the fierce objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
As his poll numbers plummeted and political fallout mounted, Trump frantically called Noem to put a pause on his signature policy.
“He said: ‘We’re going to do this targeted,'” one former official who heard the mid-June call told Reuters, describing Trump’s growing panic that indiscriminate arrests of farmhands and hotel maids were becoming a political nightmare.
The episode exposed a crack in the alliance between Trump and Miller, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly freezing operations at farms, restaurants, and meat-packing plants within hours of Trump’s desperate call, the report stated.
Senior ICE official Tatum King immediately told field offices to ease up on the raids, according to Reuters, but the stand-down lasted only days before Miller and Noem rescinded the order.
Trump’s administration has doubled overall arrests, slapped travel bans on 19 countries, and earmarked a staggering $170 billion for immigration enforcement under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed in July.
Now the federal courts are smack in the middle of this dispute. They’ve paused deportations in many instances and more cases are yet to be decided. This matter isn’t as simple as Stephen Miller, who is not a lawyer, thinks they should be.
Simply put, MAGA is involved in an internecine war. Both sides cannot possibly win. So who will win out? The far right-wing MAGAs or the more centrist Republican types? The answer will depend upon how Trump handles these key issues, immigration and more importantly, Epstein. Trump’s BBB has allocated an incredible amount of money to ICE, more than to the FBI and DOJ combined, but unless the rule of law gets buried altogether, the massive purge of POCs is not going to take place the way Stephen Miller originally scripted it. And it looks like Pam Bondi is cornered. What she will do next will be very revealing.
When you’re sitting on a pile of dung…it’s hard not to stink like shit.