Journalist flags plan for Democrats to 'collapse' Trump's latest 'cruel' actions

President Donald Trump is attempting to “provoke chaos” with his actions in Los Angeles, according to New York Times Opinion writer Jean Guerrero. However, she believes that if the left stays strong, the “chaos will collapse under its own cruelty.”

“Los Angeles is becoming the epicenter of a counternarrative to President Trump’s propaganda about immigrants,” Guerrero said. “Mr. Trump’s decisions to deploy the National Guard and now the Marines appear calculated to provoke chaos that will distract people from the damning optics of his immigration enforcement operations.”

“The protesters shouldn’t give him what he wants,” she said.

The columnist understands the anger people feel, but she believes when protesters start, “burning vehicles and hurtling rocks divert attention from the fact that ICE is destroying families.”

It is these very personal family stories that Guerrero believes “threaten Mr. Trump’s grip on the public imagination.”

She slammed the administration for “diverting resources from serious child trafficking and homeland security investigations to meet quotas that will satisfy Mr. Miller’s appetite for detained human beings.”

Guerrero, who is also a senior journalism fellow at the U.C.L.A. Latina Futures 2050 Lab, thinks the immigration rights movement should take (and is taking) one key idea from the Black Lives Matter movement: “using smartphones to expose police brutality and change the national conversation about race.”

“In the face of boldfaced authoritarianism, filming ICE arrests may seem futile and even absurd,” Guerrero said. “After all, in a world of echo chambers, it’s easy to turn away from evidence that contradicts our beliefs.”

She rhetorically asked, “Can these videos actually change people’s minds?”

Her answer, “I believe they are the only thing that can. Videos are particularly dangerous to Mr. Trump because they expose something his politics can’t touch: the fierce humanity of people willing to risk everything for one another.”

“They don’t just document resistance — they ignite it,” she said.

“The people of Los Angeles can take the bait and lose the narrative war. Or they can stay disciplined in their nonviolent protests and production of human stories.” Guerrero believes this is the way “Trump’s attempt to provoke chaos will collapse under its own cruelty.”