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You’re misunderstanding my point. Trump should go after employers. Im responding to the idea that PMme is steelmanning the protesting side. If his suggested solutions aren’t things the protesting side would support then it’s not really an alternative to placating the protests and undermines the argument that the R model of the protestors simply refusing deportations is insufficient
Alright let's chart this out.
Action A: hurts blue state, restricts immigration.
Action B: hurts red state, restricts immigration.
I think OPs point is that the protestors are against "hurts blue state" not against "restrict immigration", because they would protest action A but not action B.
It's hard to call them on this though because Trump is only taking action A. Which makes his claim of 'this is only about restricting immigration' seem dubious. If that was true why wouldn't he take action A and B? People here in favor of immigration restrictions, like yourself, seem happy to have both actions.
My personal take is that this is standard politics for most people (including Trump): benefit your allies and hurt your enemies. And try to prevent your enemies from doing things that benefit themselves or hurt you.
For a smaller minority of people it's actually about the policy. You are probably in that minority. Some protestors are also plausibly in that minority.
Since neither side is a monolith, claims of "their side is just playing politics" are likely mostly accurate. And probably 99% of politicians, including Trump are also just playing politics and don't give a shit about the policy.
And protesting some big entity playing politics with your tiny local entity seems justified. Even if you have zero principled stance on the policy in question.
This is a fair take. Still don’t agree completely but thanks for laying it out
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