Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Democrats Now Begging to Be Arrested – HotAir

June 18, 2025
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Democrats learned a lesson from Donald Trump’s return to the White House: getting arrested is good politics. 

It’s for good reasons that Americans recoil when prominent political figures are manhandled, put in handcuffs, or have their mugshot taken live on camera. We all love the idea of politicians in handcuffs or being thrown into jail, but we rightly expect that this will only happen if they commit crimes. 





Lawfare is incompatible with our values. 

Of course, Democrats engaged in a multi-year campaign of lawfare against Donald Trump and his associates, and it didn’t work out so well for them. So, in an odd twist, they are attempting to employ ninja tactics and stage stunts to get themselves arrested. 

A United States senator forced to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting a news conference. A mayor taken into custody by masked officials in military-style fatigues. A political candidate pushed against a wall and handcuffed in a dispute at an immigration courthouse.

With tensions rising over President Trump’s mass deportation policies, the government crackdown is extending to the political opposition.

As Democrats struggle to push back against the administration, federal agents have arrested or clashed with a growing number of the party’s elected officials. The scenes of chaos reflect the tinderbox nature of this political moment, and the expanding national battles over due process, the rule of law and the system of checks and balances.

“This is executive authority, especially in the Department of Homeland Security, running out of control,” said Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat. “Do the members of Congress need security details to defend themselves from the executive branch? God, I hope not.”





There is, of course, a major difference in substance between the persecution of Trump and the arrests (or manhandling) of Democrats: Democrats are actually posing threats to law enforcement, interfering with the exercise of their duties, or even lunging at Trump officials like the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. 

Their arrests are caught on video, but so are their offenses. 

The idea is to portray Trump’s America as a reborn Nazi Germany, and the Democrats as brave members of the Resistance standing up for the voiceless. 

Even the New York Times expresses skepticism about the trend. 





The most recent instance came on Tuesday, when Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested at an immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan as he tried to escort a migrant whom agents were seeking to arrest.

The Department of Homeland Security suggested that Mr. Lander, who has trailed in polls of the mayoral race, was seeking to “undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment,” and said that he had assaulted law enforcement, claims he denied after his release later Tuesday.

Certainly, plenty of politicians over the years have gotten themselves arrested in an effort to draw attention to themselves or their cause. Many elected Democrats have rushed to show how fiercely they are opposing Mr. Trump’s administration, and have been rewarded for doing so by the party’s base. Accusations of grandstanding flowed in quickly from Republicans on Tuesday.

It’s doubtful that most Americans will be outraged by law enforcement’s enforcement of the law, but its also likely that they will react with something like “a pox on both your houses.” That is, the small number of people who are actually persuadable. Liberals will see tyranny, and conservatives will see Democrats causing chaos by grandstanding. 





The bigger problem Democrats have here is the cause to which they are dedicating themselves: these politicians are getting arrested in the name of illegal immigrants. Deporting illegals is popular in the United States, and throwing yourself at law enforcement to block them from doing their jobs makes them look extreme. 

Trump was arrested for being Donald Trump; these officials are being arrested for interfering with law enforcement doing the job most Americans want them to do. It’s not the same thing. 

Democrats are doing this because they have little else they can do. The party infrastructure is fracturing, as demonstrated by union leaders resigning from the Democratic Party’s national committee in a huff, and the only thing that unites the party is a desperate desire to destroy Trump. It’s a great distraction from the chaos within their ranks, and a way for individual politicians to raise their profile. 





Will it harm Trump politically? It’s hard to say. Certainly, stunts like this will not determine who wins the midterms–the economy will, as well as the inevitable pendulum swing away from the party in power. Trump will be able to overcome the midterm curse if the economy is humming along, and will lose seats in the House if it isn’t. 

Individual Democrats can benefit from these stunts, but the Party itself? Not so much. 







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