Former senior Biden aide Andrew Bates told MSNBC that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on protests is a “sputtering” attempt to distract because he “knows he is losing” on the economy, the feud with Elon Musk, and Musk’s explosive Jeffrey Epstein attacks.
Trump Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sparked protests in Los Angeles over the weekend with a series of raids at workplaces like Home Depot and the garment district. The situation escalated when Trump ordered the deployment of 4,000 National Guard soldiers and 700 active-duty Marines, and with threats to arrest Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA).
The crackdown came amid intense media attention to the bombshell blow-up between Trump and Elon Musk, the debt-exploding Big Beautiful Bill that sparked it, and the derisive criticism of his trade policies.
Bates — currently a senior communications advisor for The Cost Coalition — was a guest on Monday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Weeknight, during which he blamed Trump’s woes for the crackdown:
SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND: Now, I didn’t read that tease before I sat down today. I, about, you know, this being a distraction. Is it a distraction or are they just really good multitaskers at some very nefarious thing?
ANDREW BATES: The way I see it is, if you look back at Trump’s history, this is somebody who gassed protesters in Lafayette Square during his first term. This is somebody who’s always eager for a distraction when he knows he is losing support.
And quantifiably, he is now the least popular president at this point in a term of anyone in history. And we know why that is.
For one thing, his tariffs are the biggest middle class tax hike in modern history. They’re raising the prices. That he ran on lowering. That was his number one promise.
Now he’s embroiled in a debate over inflationary tax giveaways for the rich that the country rejects, especially because they come at the price of Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, adding to the debt. And in other areas, his administration’s falling apart too.
Elon Musk says he’s in the Epstein files. He also just accepted a $400 million personal bribe in the form of a jet from Qatar, which is a country that funds Hamas.
So I think this is the kind of sputtering behavior that you see from him when he really wants to talk about anything but the economy. And so I think that when we speak out against the ways that he is abusing power, it’s important for us to still make sure that that’s in the conversation.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Weeknight.