NEW YORK — When Donald Trump first ran for the White House eight years ago, protesters filled the streets.
His inflammatory rhetoric and often dehumanizing descriptions of immigrants spurred thousands of people to demonstrate outside his rallies. By then, in 2016, protesters were regularly interrupting his speeches, leading to clashes and foreshadowing Trump’s habit of encouraging violence against those he considers his enemies.
“Destroy them, will you?” Trump once said this as he urged the crowd to go after the protesters themselves — even promising to pay their legal bills.
No longer.
Now that he is once again pursuing an agenda that is arguably more extreme than his two previous campaigns, mass protests at Trump rallies and appearances are a thing of the past. When Trump returned to New York last week for a hearing in one of his criminal cases, only a few opponents showed up outside the courthouse. During a midwestern swing Tuesday, Trump was briefly interrupted by a protest in Green Bay but otherwise faced minimal opposition.
In a twist, it is now President Joe Biden who is facing an ongoing protest movement, largely from those outraged by the administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. At his first major rally of the year, Biden’s 22-minute speech was interrupted no fewer than a dozen times by opponents calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Protesters repeatedly disrupted his celebrity fundraiser with former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at New York’s Radio City Music Hall last week, while hundreds of others demonstrated outside.
Nearly a decade after Trump launched his first campaign, organizers and others who participated in previous protests describe a change in tactics as they focus their efforts on other issues or turn out voters in November. Some described a “Trump fatigue” after nearly a decade of outrage. Others say Biden’s policies toward Israel have them most agitated and have turned their attention to protesting him.
“All the people who were going to protest against Trump, a lot of these people, a lot of that energy is now focused on protesting a genocide in Gaza,” said Thomas Kennedy, an immigrant from Argentina who has taken part in more than a dozen anti-Trump campaigns. protests and rallies in 2016.
Kennedy still describes the former president as a “terrible threat.” But for “a lot of people like me who would have protested against Trump, it’s just demoralizing and disheartening. It’s not worth my effort or my energy.”
That’s a potential warning sign for Biden, whose campaign aims to reinvigorate his base by portraying Trump as a threat and framing the election as a historic test of the country’s commitment to democracy.
Biden campaign officials note that protest intensity has not been correlated with recent election results. Trump won in 2016 despite intense opposition, and President Obama won despite demonstrations in 2012. They also point to Democratic victories in recent elections, including the 2022 midterm elections.
Some who have organized protests against Trump in the past say the more muted approach this year is part of a deliberate effort to avoid elevating his comments and ideas.
Strongmen “need an audience and they need gas and wind in their sails,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, a group that started as a global demonstration against Trump’s inauguration in 2017. best thing people can do What we can do to fight Trump in many ways is not to give him a platform and gas.”
It’s a perspective, she said, that manifested itself during the 2020 campaign, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many anti-Trump activist groups decided to “disengage.” Instead, the demonstrations turned to broader demands for racial justice following the killing of George Floyd. by police.
Annette Magnus, former director of Battle Born Progress, a Nevada group that helped organize anti-Trump protests during the 2016 election, also described a strategic shift.
“People are very focused on turnout and going door to door and talking to voters because that’s what matters,” she said. “I will do everything I can to ensure he is never elected again. It will just look different because it is a different election year and so much has happened since then.”
There are also safety concerns, with some organizers concluding that demonstrating against Trump is not worth the potential physical risk.
Trump has encountered occasional protests at his events this year. During early voting in Iowa and New Hampshire, a small group of environmentalists interrupted all major candidates, including Trump. But his response underscored how much things had changed.
“It’s amazing because that happened all the time. And I don’t think this has happened in two and a half or three years,” he noted after a break in Indianola. “It always adds excitement.”
That “excitement” included beatings and arrests, as well as frequent scenes of protesters clashing with supporters and riot police.
In March 2016, Trump was forced to cancel a rally in Chicago after raucous protesters stormed the arena where he was scheduled to speak. A day later in Ohio, a man jumped a barrier and rushed onto Trump’s stage. The US Secret Service was mobilized to surround the candidate in a protective ring.
Trump routinely responded to protesters with mockery and insults, telling them to “Go home to Mom,” or instructing security to “Get them out!” as his crowd erupted into chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
Eventually, organizers began playing an announcement with instructions for the public ahead of his rallies.
“If a protest starts near you, do not under any circumstances touch or hurt a protester,” one version said. Instead, they were told to notify law enforcement by holding up rally signs and chanting Trump’s name.
This time it is Biden who must adapt to endless disruptions. Unlike Trump, the sitting president has tried to defuse confrontation. At a recent event in Raleigh, North Carolina, promoting the administration’s health care policies, Biden urged the crowd to “be patient” with those shouting their concerns about Gaza.
“They have a point. We need to bring much more care to Gaza,” he said, to strong applause.
That was a very different reception than that of Paula Muñoz, who was a student at Nova Southeastern University in Florida in October 2015, when she and some friends decided to stage one of the first disruptions of a Trump event.
About a dozen activists — including her future husband — signed up for the rally at Trump’s Doral golf club — and divided themselves into three groups, planning to space their outbursts into 20-minute intervals.
“Our goal was to interrupt and harass the entire speech,” she said. “To basically try to ruin his event.”
The event would provide a taste of the violence to come. One of the protesters was forcefully dragged by the collar of his shirt and pulled to the ground; another was kicked.
Muñoz is no longer focused on Trump. Muñoz is now executive director of the Florida Student Power Network and devotes her time to local issues, including an abortion amendment that will be on the ballot in November.
“We are exhausted,” she said, expressing her frustrations with “the two-party system in general.” National politics, she said, “almost feels like a distraction” when people are struggling to pay their rent.
Although she said she was scared by the prospect of a new Trump administration, she said she was deeply disappointed by Biden.
“We are tired of having to choose the lesser of two evils,” she said. “That’s part of what I think people feel burned out by. It’s like total disappointment.”
Marta Popadiak, director of movement politics for People’s Action, a progressive activist organization, said the group is focused on voter turnout but has not ruled out organizing protests at the GOP convention this summer.
“We are hyper-focused on executing our persuasion program and preparing to defeat (Trump) in 2024.”
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Weissert reported from Washington.